We argue word embedding models are a useful tool for the study of culture using a historical analysis of shared understandings of social class as an empirical case. Word embeddings represent semantic relations between words as relationships between vectors in a high-dimensional space, specifying a relational model of meaning consistent with contemporary theories of culture. Dimensions induced by word differences (rich – poor) in these spaces correspond to dimensions of cultural meaning, and the projection of words onto these dimensions reflects widely shared associations, which we validate with surveys. Analyzing text from millions of books published over 100 years, we show that the markers of class continuously shifted amidst the economic transformations of the twentieth century, yet the basic cultural dimensions of class remained remarkably stable. The notable exception is education, which became tightly linked to affluence independent of its association with cultivated taste.

中文翻译：

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文化的几何学：通过词嵌入分析阶级的含义

我们认为词嵌入模型是一种有用的工具，可以使用对社会阶级的共同理解的历史分析作为实证案例来研究文化。词嵌入将词之间的语义关系表示为高维空间中向量之间的关系，指定了与当代文化理论一致的意义关系模型。这些空间中由单词差异（富 - 穷）引起的维度对应于文化意义的维度，并且单词在这些维度上的投影反映了广泛共享的关联，我们通过调查验证了这一点。分析 100 多年来出版的数百万本书的文本，我们表明阶级的标志在 20 世纪的经济转型中不断变化，然而，阶级的基本文化维度仍然非常稳定。一个显着的例外是教育，它与富裕紧密相连，独立于其与培养品味的联系。