@inproceedings{schoots-2023-analyzing,
    title = "Analyzing political formation through historical isi{X}hosa text analysis: Using frequency analysis to examine emerging {A}frican Nationalism in {S}outh {A}frica",
    author = "Schoots, Jonathan",
    editor = "Mabuya, Rooweither  and
      Mthobela, Don  and
      Setaka, Mmasibidi  and
      Van Zaanen, Menno",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the Fourth workshop on Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL 2023)",
    month = may,
    year = "2023",
    address = "Dubrovnik, Croatia",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/add-emnlp-2024-awards/2023.rail-1.8/",
    doi = "10.18653/v1/2023.rail-1.8",
    pages = "65--75",
    abstract = "This paper showcases new research avenues made possible by applying computational methods to historical isiXhosa text. I outline a method for isiXhosa computational text analysis which adapts word frequency analysis to be applied to isiXhosa texts focusing on root words. The paper showcases the value of the approach in a study of emerging political identities in early African nationalism, examining a novel dataset of isiXhosa newspapers from 1874 to 1890. The analysis shows how a shared identity of {\textquoteleft}Blackness' (Abantsundu and Abamnyama) dynamically emerged, and follows the impact of leading intellectuals as well as African voter mobilization in shaping communal political discourse."
}