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Introduction to Text Analysis

Text analysis is the computational study of written materials. This guide covers the fundamental concepts and tools.

What is Text Analysis?​

Text analysis (also called text mining) uses computational methods to extract meaningful patterns from text. For humanities scholars, this means:

  • Distant reading — Analyzing patterns across thousands of documents
  • Named entity recognition — Automatically identifying people, places, and organizations
  • Topic modeling — Discovering hidden themes in large document collections

Key Concepts​

Tokenization​

Breaking text into smaller units (words, sentences, or phrases) for analysis.

Frequency Analysis​

Counting how often words or phrases appear. Simple but powerful for understanding text patterns.

N-grams​

Sequences of N consecutive words. Useful for finding phrases and collocations.

Tools We'll Cover​

  • Python + spaCy — Industry-standard NLP library
  • Voyant Tools — Web-based text analysis (no coding required)
  • Claude AI — For quick analysis and pattern recognition

More text analysis guides coming soon.