  Measuring meaning is a central problem in cultural sociology and word
embeddings may offer powerful new tools to do so. But like any tool, they build
on and exert theoretical assumptions. In this paper I theorize the ways in
which word embeddings model three core premises of a structural linguistic
theory of meaning: that meaning is relational, coherent, and may be analyzed as
a static system. In certain ways, word embedding methods are vulnerable to the
same, enduring critiques of these premises. In other ways, they offer novel
solutions to these critiques. More broadly, formalizing the study of meaning
with word embeddings offers theoretical opportunities to clarify core concepts
and debates in cultural sociology, such as the coherence of meaning. Just as
network analysis specified the once vague notion of social relations (Borgatti
et al. 2009), formalizing meaning with embedding methods can push us to specify
and reimagine meaning itself.
