On 27th July 2016, the Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare’s Language team held its first panel meeting. The panel meeting was essentially an opportunity for the project’s advisors / ambassadors to visit our research centre and learn more about our aims and ambitions. More importantly, it was also an opportunity for the wider panel to critically assess the project team’s progress, and point out any flaws or difficulties that may arise. The panel were described as the project’s critical friends.
The day began at 10:30am, and ended at 4:30pm. The day consisted of a series of mini presentations focussing on results and method. There was also extensive discussion about the project’s engagement and publicity activity, and how to decide on the most effective way to convey the encyclopaedia’s information to its users. The day’s agenda is attached below:
| Time | Event |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Arrival and coffee |
| 11:00 – 12:20 | A series of mini presentations focussing on results |
| – Project outline (Jonathan Culpeper) | |
| – Lexical items: Scottish, Irish and Welsh (Jonathan Culpeper / Alison Findlay) | |
| – Grammatical items: The affirmatives yes, yea and ay (Jonathan Culpeper) | |
| – Character profiles: Romeo and Juliet (Jonathan Culpeper) | |
| – Play genre: Tragedy vs. comedy (Dawn Archer) | |
| – The language of soliloquy (Sean Murphy) | |
| – The language of Shakespeare and that of his contemporary playwrights: The weather (Jane Demmen) | |
| 12:20 – 1:30 | Lunch (preceded by a brief photo opportunity and a toast) |
| 1:30 – 2:30 | A series of mini presentations focussing on method |
| – Spelling regularisation (VARD) (Dawn Archer / Paul Rayson/ Alistair Baron) | |
| – Part-of-speech tagging (CLAWS) (Paul Rayson) | |
| – Semantic tagging (USAS) (Paul Rayson) | |
| – Social tagging (Dawn Archer) | |
| – Comparative playwrights corpus (Jane Demmen) | |
| – EEBO and genre (Sean Murphy) | |
| – Corpus methods and CQPweb (Andrew Hardie) | |
| 2.30 – 2.45 | Users, engagement, publicity (Jonathan Culpeper / Alison Findlay / Mathew Gillings) |
| 2:45 – 3:15 | Tea break |
| 3:15 – 4:30 | Panel meeting (Chaired by David Crystal) |
The panel meeting itself generated some food for thought, and the valued input from our panel has resulted in a number of tactical changes. The aim still remains the same, but the ways to achieve the means has changed ever-so-slightly. There was also extensive discussion about how the encyclopaedia could be used in a classroom or theatre context, and our panel members who represent those interests suggested that people may benefit from an app in addition to the printed encyclopaedia.
Overall, the panel meeting was highly successful, and we are grateful to our panel members for joining us and offering their thoughts.