The Meanings of “Meaning” in Social Scientific Text Analysis

Abstract

Goldenstein and Poschmann (hereafter GP, this volume, pp. 83–131) offer a novel approach, or combination of approaches, for tracking multiple layers of “meaning” in a collection of texts over time. The core theoretical argument is sound: Any given text conveys multiple layers of meaning simultaneously, the relationships across those layers may evolve dynamically over time in any given corpus, and different textanalytic tools capture different layers of meaning and should be able to characterize this co-evolution if used in combination. In fact, similar logic underlies recent developments at the cutting edge of natural language processing (NLP) research. There are, however, some pernicious measurement traps in the text-analytic techniques GP apply here, and in the absence of some important validation, we cannot be certain that they have captured the meaning they assert.