Examining Semantic Shifts of Sociological Papers from 1940 to 2020 Using Text Embeddings

Concerns have been raised regarding the potential fragmentation and weakening historical continuity within sociology during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This study investigates the evolution of sociological discourse by using text embedding models. By turning paper documents into high-dimensional embeddings, this research analyzes eight decades of papers (1940-2020) from the American Sociological Review (ASR) and the American Journal of Sociology (AJS). Findings indicate that while semantic meanings of sociology gradually and steadily shift away from its past, the studies in the twenty-first century have only tenuous semantic relationships with those in the 1940s and 1950s. Moreover, the development of sociology appears to follow the shape of multiple ongoing subprocesses rather than a series of clearly defined distinct periods. This research contributes to understanding the semantic shift of publications in social sciences.