Visualizing sequences of texts using collocational networks

Abstract

This paper presents the collocational network, a method originating in corpus linguistics, as a tool for visualizing sequences of texts. A collocational network is a two-dimensional picture of the most central words in a text and the connections between them. When collocational networks are created out of sequences of documents, they offer the user the possibility to quickly discover the most significant differences between the documents. As a case study, a sequence of financial reports is turned into collocational networks for visual comparison.