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Values That Are Explicitly Present in Fairy Tales: Comparing Samples from German, Italian and Portuguese Traditions

Alba Morollon Diaz-Faes, Carla Sofia Ribeiro Murteira, Martin Ruskov

TL;DR

The study develops a reproducible, corpus-driven method to quantify explicit references to social values in European fairy tales using a compass-based word embedding framework anchored in Schwartz's Basic Human Values. By assembling Grimm Germany, Italian, and Portuguese tale corpora, tokenizing and annotating value-related terms, and analyzing semantic variation across cultures, the authors identify a cross-cultural pattern emphasizing Benevolence, Conformity, and Universalism, with Germany showing stronger Universalist signals. The approach is validated via historical and social triangulation, while acknowledging limitations of non-contextual embeddings and explicit-reference focus. The work suggests a pan-European cultural memory reflected in fairy tales and offers a scalable methodology for historical-value studies in literary corpora.

Abstract

Looking at how social values are represented in fairy tales can give insights about the variations in communication of values across cultures. We study how values are communicated in fairy tales from Portugal, Italy and Germany using a technique called word embedding with a compass to quantify vocabulary differences and commonalities. We study how these three national traditions differ in their explicit references to values. To do this, we specify a list of value-charged tokens, consider their word stems and analyse the distance between these in a bespoke pre-trained Word2Vec model. We triangulate and critically discuss the validity of the resulting hypotheses emerging from this quantitative model. Our claim is that this is a reusable and reproducible method for the study of the values explicitly referenced in historical corpora. Finally, our preliminary findings hint at a shared cultural understanding and the expression of values such as Benevolence, Conformity, and Universalism across the studied cultures, suggesting the potential existence of a pan-European cultural memory.

Values That Are Explicitly Present in Fairy Tales: Comparing Samples from German, Italian and Portuguese Traditions

TL;DR

The study develops a reproducible, corpus-driven method to quantify explicit references to social values in European fairy tales using a compass-based word embedding framework anchored in Schwartz's Basic Human Values. By assembling Grimm Germany, Italian, and Portuguese tale corpora, tokenizing and annotating value-related terms, and analyzing semantic variation across cultures, the authors identify a cross-cultural pattern emphasizing Benevolence, Conformity, and Universalism, with Germany showing stronger Universalist signals. The approach is validated via historical and social triangulation, while acknowledging limitations of non-contextual embeddings and explicit-reference focus. The work suggests a pan-European cultural memory reflected in fairy tales and offers a scalable methodology for historical-value studies in literary corpora.

Abstract

Looking at how social values are represented in fairy tales can give insights about the variations in communication of values across cultures. We study how values are communicated in fairy tales from Portugal, Italy and Germany using a technique called word embedding with a compass to quantify vocabulary differences and commonalities. We study how these three national traditions differ in their explicit references to values. To do this, we specify a list of value-charged tokens, consider their word stems and analyse the distance between these in a bespoke pre-trained Word2Vec model. We triangulate and critically discuss the validity of the resulting hypotheses emerging from this quantitative model. Our claim is that this is a reusable and reproducible method for the study of the values explicitly referenced in historical corpora. Finally, our preliminary findings hint at a shared cultural understanding and the expression of values such as Benevolence, Conformity, and Universalism across the studied cultures, suggesting the potential existence of a pan-European cultural memory.
Paper Structure (19 sections, 7 figures, 4 tables)

This paper contains 19 sections, 7 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Unpacking Fairy-Tale Studies from the Brothers Grimm to Digital Humanities
  4. The expression of values across cultures in European Fairy Tales
  5. Using Word Embeddings to Quantify Vocabulary Differences
  6. Method
  7. Process
  8. Fairy Tales Corpora
  9. Selection of Tokens
  10. Critical Review
  11. Word Embedding with a Compass
  12. Comparison of Semantic Variation
  13. Historical and Social Critical Analysis
  14. Automated Annotation Tool
  15. Results
  16. ...and 4 more sections

Figures (7)

  • Figure 1: Theoretical model of relations among ten motivational types of values schwartz2012.
  • Figure 2: The outline of the process we followed.
  • Figure 3: A Venn diagram showing the occurrences of stemmed tokens across the national corpora.
  • Figure 4: Screenshot of a browsing page from MoreEver, the bespoke web instrument that reviews the produced annotations. Another view shows a clickable heatmap as Figure \ref{['fig:heatmap_detailed']} in Appendix, which allows for a distant reading view.
  • Figure 5: Counts of identified occurrences of stemmed tokens across the texts of the three corpora. An interactive version of this heatmap is available in MoreEver. In it clicking on a number takes you to the corresponding text for easier review.
  • ...and 2 more figures