DIGI405-25S2 (C) Semester Two 2025

Texts, Discourses and Data: the Humanities and Data Science

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 14 July 2025
End Date: Sunday, 9 November 2025
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 27 July 2025
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 28 September 2025

Description

This course examines computer-aided methods used in digital humanities and the social sciences for analysing discourses, an object of study that draws together multiple ways that language reflects and shapes social meanings. Within this context, it introduces concepts and methods for analysing natural language data and applies these through a series of practical lab classes. The first part of the course focuses on classic discourse analysis methods drawn from corpus linguistics, as well as the essential preprocessing steps used to prepare texts for a range of analytical purposes. In the second part of the course we study topic modeling, a technique for unsupervised, exploratory data analysis that has been widely used in digital humanities, and, finally, consider supervised text classification methods to identify discursive attributes such as sentiment, genre, or style.

Learning Outcomes

  • By the end of the course, students will be able to:
  • Apply a range of computer-assisted text analysis methods with broad applications, drawing examples from humanities and social sciences.
  • Explain how text analysis results are connected to social, cultural and linguistic factors and contexts.
  • Identify ethical and political dimensions to computer-assisted text analysis methods.

Prerequisites

Subject to approval of the Programme Coordinator.

Timetable 2025

Students must attend one activity from each section.

Lecture A
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Monday 10:00 - 11:00 Ernest Rutherford 140
14 Jul - 24 Aug
8 Sep - 19 Oct
Computer Lab A
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Monday 12:00 - 14:00 James Logie 214-Mac Computer Lab
14 Jul - 24 Aug
8 Sep - 19 Oct
02 Wednesday 13:00 - 15:00 Ernest Rutherford 212 Computer Lab
14 Jul - 24 Aug
8 Sep - 19 Oct
03 Wednesday 16:00 - 18:00 Ernest Rutherford 464 Computer Lab
14 Jul - 24 Aug
8 Sep - 19 Oct

Timetable Note

Please note: Attendance at 'Drop in Class A' is optional.

Course Coordinator

Geoffrey Ford

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,084.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Humanities .

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