Unraveling minnan imagery: a comprehensive analysis of traditional and modern minnan nursery rhymes through complex networks

Abstract

Nursery rhymes provide insights into the traditions, beliefs, and values of a culture, thereby making it an integral part of a community’s heritage. As representative linguistic resources within the intangible cultural heritage of the Hoklo people, Minnan nursery rhymes (MNRs) play a crucial role in connecting the Chinese mainland, Taiwan Strait, and overseas Chinese communities. This study delves into features of 617 traditional and 289 modern pieces through text mining techniques, including text segmentation, the TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) method, and the complex network analysis. We examine the frequency and emotional purity of lyrics at a larger scale than previous studies using a small set of manually annotated samples. Furthermore, we analyze the patterns of MNRs by assessing the overall, individual, core-periphery structures of the constructed MNR networks, considering key terms as nodes and co-occurrence relationships between nodes as links. Our investigation reveals the heterogeneous nature of terms in both traditional and modern MNR networks. Moreover, through the community detection method, we identify five primary imagery features presented in MNRs. Traditional MNRs place emphasis on family relationships, folk culture, and food culture, reflecting enduring aspects of Minnan cultural heritage. In contrast, modern MNRs pivot towards themes of children’s emotions and natural scenery, indicative of evolving societal values. This study represents the first large-scale complex network analysis of MNRs, providing valuable insights into the embedded Minnan culture and serving as a foundation for further research into the societal dynamics reflected in these cherished MNRs resources.