Text analytics, or text mining, uses software to analyze written language as data. It looks for potentially significant words, phrases and larger units of discourse to tease out cultural trends and other meanings that traditional “close reading” may miss. Students performing text analytics learn to...

  • Detect linguistic patterns within and across texts
  • Challenge their own and others’ assumptions about literary evidence
  • Use their findings to propose new readings or reevaluate existing interpretations

Recommended tools

  • Voyant—Voyant is a web-based text analysis and reading environment offering an assortment of general and specialized text-mining tools
  • CLAWS—CLAWS is an easy-to-use parsing tool from the University of Lancaster that analyzes parts of speech in written text

Teaching materials