Total or Selected Content Analysis

The core of any system of content a~alysis is a dictionary specifying the content categories to be assigned to verbal units. The system described in this paper utilizes a category dictionary in which all the conmon words of English are classified into one or two of lid possible catec ories. 2 The associated cemputer method is at present capable of analyzing a text of 25,000 words in about 20 minutes of machine time, outputting a distribution of frequency of occurrence of the 116 content categories. Up to 15 separate texts may be analyzed at the same time, or the productions of ]5 speakers, mixed in any way, as long as each segment is identified with the appropriate source. The cc~puter analysis program will be discussed briefly, as will some of the considerations which went into the construction of the dictionary. An il]nstration of the analysis of textual mater~a] will be presented, and two studies applying the procedure will be described. Preparing, a ~ and machine analysis For any Enc!ish language corpus to be ane~!yzed, a simple editin C proce@Are is fo]]c~zed before the text is card punched. The editor