Topic models indicate textual aboutness and pragmatics: Valuation practices in Islamophobic discourse

Abstract

This study investigates the analysis of evaluative linguistic patterns within the context of the German-language Islamophobic online blog PI-News. The corpus consists of texts that refer to the Quran. The innovation of this research lies in two primary dimensions: Firstly, it adopts John Dewey’s pragmatism to establish an explicit valuation theory. Secondly, it extends the boundaries of topic modeling in the digital humanities by integrating van Dijk’s differentiation between aboutness and pragmatic macrostructures of texts. Notably, within these pragmatic macrostructures, the study highlights the practice of quoting Quran suras as a significant linguistic pattern. Together with the analysis of topic distribution and topic pathways in texts, the paper illustrates how evaluative practices reinforce the ideal of an Islam-free Europe.