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This chapter explores ways in which digital methods may help to study the historical semantics and pragmatical uses of comparisons. From the perspective of traditional conceptual history an obvious starting point would be to search for occurrences of the noun »comparison« itself, including its derivatives and synonyms. In this chapter, however, we move beyond single-word searches or collocation studies towards what one might call a computer-assisted »historical semantics of utterances«. In ordinary language most comparisons are indeed »performed« through inconspicuous sentences such as »x is like y« (equations) or »j is better than k« (grading comparisons). When utterances such as these (and not words) are chosen as our minimal unit of analysis, any computer-assisted study of the semantics and pragmaticall uses of comparisons becomes much more complicated. Digitized text corpora have to be specifically tagged, and digital search tools need to be »trained« in order to achieve an error-free identification of the searched for sentences. In this chapter we proceed in three steps. In a first step (section 2) we develop a basic typology of comparative utterances, then delimit our present field of inquiry to one particular type of utterances (temporal comparisons) and identify the crucial semantical / syntactical markers which might enable digital tools to recognize temporal comparisons in digitized text corpora. In a second step (section 3) we apply our typological considerations to an already existing, highly elaborated digitized text base: the Hansard Corpus of British Parliamentary Debates (1803-2005) (HC), supported by the HTST tagger. It is demonstrated how queries have to be formulated in order to achieve valuable and relatively error-free search results. By contrast, in a third step (section 4) our analytical framework is applied to a self-defined text corpus - a corpus of utopias and dystopias ranging from Thomas More's »Utopia« (1516) down to Adam Sternbergh's »Shovel Ready« (2014). We explain the laborious process of digitizing and tagging the corpus by using a freely available tagger (Corpus Workbench), then describe several rounds of queries and finally evaluate the search results. It turns out that these are relatively weak and defective, compared to those achieved with the Hansard Corpus and the HTST tagger, as well as compared to a »traditional«, hermeneutical way of filtering out comparative utterances. Hence, our contest between »man« and »machine« ends with a draw. While well-established corpora and refined tools may render valuable results in some cases, the balance is more mixed when corpora are self-defined and tools are less sophisticated: in these cases we still need to carefully weigh up the advantages of speed provided by digital tools against the amount of preparatory work and the rate of errors to be corrected manually.

This article aims to demonstrate that the transition from the mainstream narrative to the interactional history of concepts promises tangible benefits for scholars of social time in general and temporal comparisons in particular. It is shown that the traditionally close alignment of narration with the production of historical consciousness at various levels hinders the study of time as a semantic variable perpetually contested, amended and upheld across society. Alternatively, the references to time made in public settings, allowing for more or less instant reactions (turn-taking) as well as expression of dissenting opinions (stance-taking), offer a much more representative palette of temporal semantics and pragmatics in a given sociopolitical environment. In a particularly intriguing case, the essentially deliberative venue where contestation is supported by both institutional arrangements and political reasons (British House of Commons) is put to test under circumstances commonly known as ‘the post-war consensus’ – the unspoken convention directing opposing political parties to suspend stance-taking regarding the past actions of the government during WWII, its immediate aftermath and its future prospects. As a reliable indicator of this arrangement, the contestation of temporal comparisons between relevant pasts and futures is tested in oppositions reflecting party allegiances (Conservatives vs. Labour vs. Liberals) and executive functions (government vs. opposition) between 1946 and 1952. It is shown that, notwithstanding the prevalence of non-contested statements aimed at preserving interactional coherence and pragmatic functionality of the setting, the moderately active contestation of the adversary’s temporal comparisons in the House of Commons at that time helped all parties, albeit to a different degree, to shape their own political and institutional roles as well as to delegitimize their respective adversaries.

In Zeiten einer global fortschreitenden Urbanisierung der Lebenswelten gewinnen Imaginationen und Projektionen eines guten Lebens auf dem Land eine neue diskursive Attraktivität. Sie verweisen auf eine lange und ambivalente Geschichte zwischen Anforderungen und Überforderungen gesellschaftlichen Wandels sowie den Ansprüchen auf ein gelingendes Leben. Angesichts umfassender Transformationen, Krisen und Katastrophen bieten die kulturellen Produktionen ländlicher Lebensverhältnisse - und damit verbunden die Vorstellungen von Natur, Idylle und Heimat - sowohl idealisierte Sehnsuchtsorte als auch konkretisierte Orientierungspunkte. Land und Ländlichkeit geraten in ein komplexes Spannungsverhältnis, das auch Auskunft gibt über Wahrnehmung und Selbstverständnis im Leben in und zwischen Stadt und Land.

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