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Semantic Fields and Polysemy: A Correspondence Analysis Approach Semantic Fields Studying semantic fields or literary themes in texts quickly confronts the researcher with a paradox. A computer string search will produce a list of the frequencies of words potentially related to the semantic field. But polysemy--the fact that many words have multiple significations--means that there is an un-measured difference between the potential and the real allusions. The semantic field of "solitude" or "loneliness" is a …

…ve speaker informants. The results reported here illustrate the usefulness of correspondence analysis for interpreting complex data. They also suggest that a person with native-speaker ability in a language, even an originally English-speaking graduate student in French, will produce about the same results as a professor of French literature. It would seem then that the use of informants for studying semantic fields, or literary themes, is a justifiable enterprise from the statistical perspective.