SemanticDistance_Data_Viz

Jamie Reilly, Hannah R. Mechtenberg, Emily B. Myers, Jonathan E. Peelle

2025-08-27

Data Visualization Options

SemanticDistance contains two primary visualization options. Most users will be able to plot monologue distances as continuously changing time series using simple approaches like ggline, specializing bells and whistles to their own unique needs. The visualization funtions we have included are used for gleaning structure(s) from lists of words. At present, these options include hierarchical cluster analysis (producing a triangle dendrogram) and network analysis (producing a simple undirected graph network). Each of these approaches uses simple machine learning algorithms (kmeans) to determine optimal cluster sizes.

STEP 1: CLEAN AND FORMAT YOUR MONOLOGUE OR LIST

#Start from 
MyCleanList <- clean_monologue_or_list(Unordered_List, wordcol='mytext')
knitr::kable(head(MyCleanList, 10), format = "pipe")
id_row_orig text_initialsplit word_clean id_row_postsplit
1 trumpet trumpet 1
1 trombone trombone 2
1 flute flute 3
1 piano piano 4
1 guitar guitar 5
1 gun gun 6
1 knife knife 7
1 missile missile 8
1 bullet bullet 9
1 spear spear 10

STEP 2: CREATE DENDROGRAM or NETWORK

From your cleaned and formatted list, visualize relations between words

Option 1: Hierarchical Cluster Dendrogram

Words on any vector of words but only makes sense for unordered word lists! Produces a dendogram from a vector of words. First pulls words, then creates a square matrix with cosine distances for all possible word pairs: d[i,j]. Then converts semantic distance matrix to Euclidean distance. Then plots a hierchcial clustering solution moving words closer together in proximity based on their distance.

Arguments:
dat dataframe processed using clean_monologue_or_list()
output quoted argument dendrogram or network default is dendrogram
dist_type quoted argument, which distance norms would you like? default is embedding alt is ‘SD15’

mydendro <- wordlist_to_network(MyCleanList, output='dendrogram', dist_type='embedding')

print(mydendro)
#> 'dendrogram' with 2 branches and 17 members total, at height 5.168642

Option 2: iGraph network

Takes hclust properties from dendrogram steps and creates a simple igraph object.
dat dataframe cleaned using clean_monologue_or_list
output quoted argument dendrogram or network default is dendrogram
dist_type default is ‘embedding’, alt is ‘SD15’

mynetwork <- wordlist_to_network(MyCleanList, output='network', dist_type='embedding')

print(mynetwork)
#> IGRAPH 0167949 UNW- 17 68 -- 
#> + attr: name (v/c), cluster (v/n), color (v/c), size (v/n), label
#> | (v/c), label.color (v/c), label.cex (v/n), weight (e/n), color (e/c),
#> | width (e/n)
#> + edges from 0167949 (vertex names):
#>  [1] trombone--missile trombone--gun     trombone--bullet  trombone--knife  
#>  [5] trombone--spear   trombone--apple   trombone--banana  trombone--tomato 
#>  [9] trombone--disgust trombone--angry   trombone--sad     trombone--happy  
#> [13] piano   --missile piano   --bullet  piano   --spear   piano   --banana 
#> [17] piano   --tomato  piano   --disgust piano   --angry   guitar  --missile
#> [21] guitar  --spear   guitar  --banana  guitar  --tomato  guitar  --disgust
#> + ... omitted several edges