Methods for Handling of Text Data, 7,5 ECTS
The Department of Linguistics offers this course as part of the Doctoral School in the Humanities in the spring semester 2025.
Course content
The goal of the course is to introduce fundamental methodological skills for sampling, collecting, preparing, annotating and analyzing textual data in social science and the humanities. The students learn fundamental theoretical concepts and obtain practical experience of tools and methods, including the following: The relation between research questions, data collection and types of corpora. Text processing in the Unix shell. Regular expressions. Quantitative properties of language. Frequencies, occurrences and co-occurrences. Manual and data-driven annotation. Automatic annotation and analysis of text using existing tools.
Learning outcomes
In order to pass the course, students are expected to be able to:
- describe and apply methods for sampling, collecting and pre-processing of (digitized) material for text corpora
- describe and apply digital methods for annotation and analysis of textual data, in order to answer a given set of research questions
Previous experience
What has been most positive about the course?
- "Most positive was that it allowed me to really handle and look at the text or tokens of the text and what insights they may offer if I focused attention on them, isolating them. The way I approach text has certainly developed and I can see the potentialities of some of the methods presented in this class."
- "I am overall satisfied with the course, it was very well structured, the expectations were clearly conveyed and the information has been presented clearly."
- "The course was so focused on practical methods for using, handling, and understanding big corpora and that was exactly what I needed."
Would you recommend the course?
- Autumn 2023: 14/15
- "I would absolutely recommend it to someone dealing with text data."
- "It was a great introduction into how to handle big amounts of text data and it introduced some interesting tools that I will make the process a lot easier and I will, or sure, be using them in my work."
- "Great and useful course for anyone working with large quantities of text data, providing tools all the way from collection to analysis."
Last time the course was offered: Spring 2023
Number of participants: 17
Number of respondents on course evaluation: 15 (88 %)
Practical information
Mandatory elements
Attendance of at least 90% of all lectures and lab sessions is mandatory.
Examination
The course is examined through written lab reports.
Instruction
Teaching activities include lectures and lab sessions.
NB. The course is planned to be offered on campus and online, in a hybrid environment.
Period: Spring semester 2025
Course dates: TBA
Language of instruction: English
Course plan:
Course Syllabus LI102FU (453 Kb)
Apply to the course
Application
Applications for courses starting in the spring semester 2025 are received between May 15 and June 15 2024, as well as between November 15 and December 15 2024. Notifications of acceptance are sent out as soon as possible after the final date.
All applications are sent by the supervisor to: doctoralschool@hum.su.se. Official transcript of records, or certificate of registration, verifying the applicant's status as doctoral student should be enclosed with the application.
All courses are free of charge, and they are open to all who are admitted to studies on PhD-level, regardless of faculty or university. Prerequisites and special admittance requirements may apply for some courses.
How do I apply?
The application form (document link below) is used to apply for a place in a course. The supervisor (or equivalent) must support the doctoral student’s application with a motivation as to why the doctoral student should participate in the course. The supervisor also submits the proposal to the following address: doctoralschool@hum.su.se.
Application form for place in a joint faculty course (294 Kb)
Who can apply?
The Faculty of Humanities’ doctoral students have priority for places, and external doctoral students (from Stockholm University or another university) can be admitted to a course subject to availability. External doctoral students will be registered in Ladok in order to enable the Board to monitor all participants in a course.
Contact
Course director: Robert Östling
Course title in Swedish: Metoder för hantering av textdata
The course is offered by the Department of Linguistics.
Last updated: March 26, 2024
Source: Faculty of Humanities