Textual Analysis

Abstract

Human language sets us apart from other species, but science is only now developing the tools needed to study it on a massive scale. Through advances in computer-mediated communication (CMC), researchers have at their ready powerful new instruments that can extract hidden meanings that until now have been hiding in both spoken and written communications, and it can do so at speeds and on scales that were unimaginable just a decade ago. New text-analytic software programs can provide new metrics that can be used to decode the meaning of human interactions, to test a wider range of ecologically valid theories, and to expand our understandings of social and psychological phenomena. We share some illustrative examples of novel research programs utilizing this new technology, giving particular attention to the metrics they rely on and the insights these metrics can reveal. We argue that wider application of text-analytic methods will lead to the more rapid and creative explorations into the nature of social psychological phenomena.

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