A Distant Reading Experiment: Interpreting the Poetic Voice on Hughes’s Poems (1921–1967)

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-587-4_13How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Distant Reading; Jazz Poetry; Langston Hughes; Poetic Voice

Abstract

Previously, reading Hughes’s poems predominantly relied on close reading approach and it combined with either narrow-shallow or narrow-deep approaches. This study aims to read Hughes’s poetic voices on 868 poems (1921-1967) through a combined distant–narrow–deep reading approach, integrating computational analysis and qualitative interpretation. The research employs a mixed-method. Data were processed using Python 3.13 with ChatGPT-assisted algorithm coding, and Voyant Tools to generate word and n-gram frequencies along with their contextual appearances. The findings reveal two main forms, which are elaborated into three sub-discussions. First, three dominant lexical items are identified across Hughes’s poems: “the”, “and”, and “I”. The function of “the”, phonetically parallel separation to “de”, not only reinforces definite meaning but also asserts Hughes’s identity within the Afro-American diasporic. The correlation conjunction “and” serves to create a musical–rhetorical effect, while “I” does not merely highlight Hughes’s lyrical style but represents an “I” transindividual. Second, in relation to this lyrical style, patterns of repetition display rhythmic structures resembling jazz and blues, indicating the interconnection between poetic form and musicality. Finally, based on the frequency of dominant words found through Voyant Tools, three distinctive lexical items emerge such as “like”, “black”, and “white”, which demonstrate the dominance of simile and racial symbolism grounded in social and historical discourse. Therefore, this experimental reading model enables both the analysis and interpretation of the poetic voice unique to a specific poet, both the surface-level poetic structures but also their internal frameworks that sustain the poetics.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Dwi Rezki Hardianto Putra Rustan
AU  - Refisa Ananda
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/12
TI  - A Distant Reading Experiment: Interpreting the Poetic Voice on Hughes’s Poems (1921–1967)
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on English Studies in Indonesia (ICONESIA 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 137
EP  - 158
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-587-4_13
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-587-4_13
ID  - Rustan2026
ER  -