Themes, syntax and other necessary steps in the network analysis of texts:A research paper

Recent approaches to the qualitative analysis of texts afford visual depictions of words as networks. Yet network characteristics can also be quantified, enabling one to draw probabilistic inferences about a population of texts from a sample of texts-encoded-as-networks. This article describes three types of ambiguity (and related methodological problems) that arise during three necessary steps in the quantification of texts as networks: idiomatic ambiguity (in the identification of themes [or nodes]); illocutionary ambiguity (in the identification of syntactic links [or arcs]); and relevance ambiguity (in the identification of network characteristics). As one moves from theme to syntax to network, nor only does one add complexity to one's conclusions, but one also adds complexity to the encoding process as distinct types of linguistic ambiguity must be resolved. The added complexity of network encoding will be unnecessary for most research questions - questions that might better be addressed via thematic or semantic text analysis.