What is the place of interpretation in text analysis? An example using ALCESTE® software

Abstract

ABSTRACT Statistical text analyses appear at the borderline of quantitative and qualitative research, raising epistemological questions in the field. This paper focuses on a specific method of text analysis: the Reinert method. It aims to address the role of interpretation and subjectivity in the construction of the results using this kind of analysis. To this end, this manuscript presents a dual interpretation of a same corpus and software outputs highlighting the convergences and divergences in both researchers’ interpretations. It discusses how the use of statistics on qualitative data may provide a false sense of objectivity and sweep the questions of interpretation and epistemology away. Finally, it offers clear guidelines regarding individual and dual interpretation to those who wish to start using the Reinert method. We argue that this type of analysis is adaptable and can be applied across a variety of epistemological stances and research questions.