If You Count It, They Will Come
The desire to generate insight into human expression by “scientific” means is futile—but also, so it seems, perennial. Recently, two related attempts to bring certitude to the analysis of language by using computers have cropped up: one in law (called “corpus linguistics”) and one in the broader study of letters (which goes by the name of the “digital humanities”). I’ve had reason to address both a Digital Humanities conference (in person) and the corpus linguistic phenomenon (in print).
Corpus linguistics has been embraced most strongly by a group of practitioners and academics centered around BYU Law.1 These include Justice Thomas Lee of the Supreme Court of Utah and Professor James Phillips 2; writers at other institutions include Professors Josh Blackman3 and Jennifer Mascott, the latter of whose “corpus-linguistics like analysis” was featured heavily in Lucia v. S.E.C. 4 As we shall see, there are reasons why this methodology appeals most to Originalists, who hold out hope for an objective meaning to Constitutional text. The digital humanities, meanwhile, resides in a very different part of the academic universe. To (vastly) oversimplify, it involves the use of computers to digitize and analyze vast swathes of text, in hopes of performing the functions of, e.g., an English literature professor, better than mere humans can do. Ultimately, the problems with each stem from the nature of interpretation.
