Mining for meaning: how text mining can uncover the French Liberal School’s key ideas

Abstract This investigation shows that through word embedding and co-occurrence, a researcher can deduce key concepts within a corpus that, with adequate academic contextual knowledge, can guide the investigator to conclude if the corpus belongs to or has been influenced by a particular school of thought. Specifically, we have conducted an extensive analysis of the Journal des Economistes, a prominent platform for the dissemination of ideas within the French Liberal School which run from 1841 to 1936, to demonstrate the effectiveness of these tools in the context of distant reading. We have thus shown how the concepts discussed within the journal, reflect the concerns of the French Liberal School for the concepts of value, commerce, freedom of exchange, freedom, and labor, through statistical methods, as opposed to a close reading of the text.