ArticleSociological methods & research2024
Theoretical foundations and limits of word embeddings: What types of meaning can they capture?
Article in Sociological methods & research, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Data mining in pediatric radiology in the era of artificial intelligence.Pediatric radiology · 2026Review
- Online speech and communal conflict: Evidence from India.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Natural Language Processing Methods for the Study of Protein-Ligand Interactions.Journal of chemical information and modeling · 2025Review
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- Mind the semantic gap: semantic efficiency in human computer interfaces.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2025Review
- Article
- An automatic speech analytics program for digital assessment of stress burden and psychosocial health.Npj mental health research · 2023Article
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Abstract
Measuring meaning is a central problem in cultural sociology and word embeddings may offer powerful new tools to do so. But like any tool, they build on and exert theoretical assumptions. In this paper I theorize the ways in which word embeddings model three core premises of a structural linguistic theory of meaning: that meaning is coherent, relational, and may be analyzed as a static system. In certain ways, word embeddings are vulnerable to the enduring critiques of these premises. In other ways, word embeddings offer novel solutions to these critiques. More broadly, formalizing the study of meaning with word embeddings offers theoretical opportunities to clarify core concepts and debates in cultural sociology, such as the coherence of meaning. Just as network analysis specified the once vague notion of social relations, formalizing meaning with embeddings can push us to specify and reimagine meaning itself.
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