In the current special issue of NLH, my essay "Why Distant Reading Works" argues that quantitative approaches to cultural history suggest a radically different perspective on textuality. I try to think through a question that has bothered me for years:

How is it possible that simply counting words can tell us anything meaningful and true about the past?

To get at the answer, I dip my toes in relevance theory (a topic in linguistics) and I argue that language is sutured to actuality in ways that literary theory fails to account for.

Blog: https://literarymathematics.org/2023/06/13/why-distant-reading-works/

Open-access version: https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:56213

Official published version: https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2022.a898323