METHODS OF TEXT ANALYSIS AND MEMORY STUDIES: FROM TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE DIGITAL AGE

This article examines methods of text analysis within the interdisciplinary field of memory studies, which took shape in the 20th century through the concept of collective memory developed by M. Halbwachs, the theory of cultural memory developed by J. Assmann and A. Assmann, « lieux de mémoire» developed by P. Nora, and others. The aim of the article is to review existing methods of text analysis, adapt them for the study of memory, identify leading academic courses in the field, and develop the structure of a specialized educational course, “Text Analysis through the Lens of Memory Studies”. The article analyses traditional 20th century approaches – narratology, hermeneutics, discourse-oriented analysis, intertextual theory for the analysis of the transformative character of literary memory– and shows how each has been adapted to memory studies: the narratological method reconstructs how composition, focalization and temporal organization shape remembered experience into narrative; discourse analysis reveals the mechanisms that allow versions of the past to gain public recognition; sociology of culture shifts analysis from text to the collective practices, rituals, traditions around it, etc. The article further considers digital humanities methods – distant reading, corpus analysis and topic modelling – that have gained prominence in the Age of Digitalization and enabled work with large text corpora. Criteria for method selection are identified based on text type, research scale, and research query. Drawing on a review of existing master’s programs and courses (University of Amsterdam, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, among others), the article substantiates and proposes the structure of a new modular course culminating in a capstone research project. It concludes that combination of formal-textual and socio-cultural dimensions of analysis enables both to describe the past and to explain the origins of narratives and their social functions.