For this project, our markup centered around the identification of emotive statements and war-time factors. Our aim was to build a relationship between the overall sentiment of the letter (representative of the soldier's mental state on a given time), the way the writer expressed his emotions, and the experiences he had during the war.
As long as a soldier had paper and a pencil, he counted them among his few possessions. So what did our soldiers send home to their loved ones?
The writer expressing some kind of feeling, judgement, or emotional remark. Emotive statements can be explicit or implied, but must convey an emotion that is classified as positive, neutral, or negative. Ex: "We have had quite a good time and the regular hours and regular meals have backed everyone up well and now we are all as fit as ever apparently." War-time factors: Experiences related to the war reported by the writer, either involving the author or his immediate group.
Our methodology will provide quantitative data for comparing overall emotive sentiment with a proportion of factors reported. The relationship between wartime factors and emotion provides perspective into a soldier's mental wellbeing.