Dictionary-Based Text Analysis in Politics

Dictionary-based text analysis scores documents by counting how often they use words from a predefined, validated list — a dictionary or lexicon — tied to a concept such as sentiment, emotion, or a policy area. Each document's score is essentially the rate at which dictionary terms appear, so a corpus of speeches, news articles, or manifestos can be measured for tone or thematic emphasis quickly and transparently. It is the simplest and most interpretable family of automated content-analysis methods, and Grimmer and Stewart treat it as a baseline against which more elaborate text-as-data tools are judged.