Abstract
Quantitative text analysis refers to the application of one or more methods for drawing statistical inferences from text populations. After briefly distinguishing quantitative text analysis from linguistics, computational linguistics, and qualitative text analysis, issues raised during the 1955 Allerton House Conference are used as a vehicle for characterizing classical text analysis as an instrumental-thematic method. Quantitative text analysis methods are then depicted according to a 2 3 conceptual framework in which texts are interpreted either instrumentally (according to the researcher's conceptual framework) or representationally (according to the texts' sources' perspectives), as well as in which variables are thematic (counts of word/phrase occurrences), se- mantic (themes within a semantic grammar), or network-related (theme- or relation-positions within a conceptual network). Common methodological errors associated with each method are discussed. The paper concludes with a delineation of the universe of substantive answers that quantitative text analysis is able to provide to social science researchers.
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