Opening: Toward an Integrated Approach

The rise of digital humanities has led many writing researchers to consider using digital tools to analyze rhetorical patterns in text. Yet taking a digital approach to the analysis of texts is a complex task. We are faced with a variety of techniques and tools, all of which require significant investment to learn and use. How can we best understand the costs and benefits of adopting a particular approach? Are they simply alternatives or can they be integrated? The three sets of authors in this special section attempt to address these questions by using alternative methodologies to analyze a common set of documents. The following opening piece serves as an introduction to the project. In it, we place their research in the context of taxonomy of approaches to text analysis, and review prior attempts at integration. Following the articles, a closing piece examines the prospects for integration. In it, we provide a brief review of the results of the analyses followed by an examination of their commonalities and variations. Finally, we conclude with the considerations that should be taken into account in choosing a method for textual analysis, as well as a discussion of the potential for an integration of methods.