This week we contrast ‘text as data’ with other possible approaches to studying text and language. We will see that the distinctive feature of a text as a data approach (henceforward TADA) is its emphasis on language as behaviour in an institutional setting. TADA de-emphasises - indeed mostly just ignores - dictionary definitions and grammatical niceties to focus on what language is being used to do, e.g. emphasize an issue or express a position. In marked contrast to other approaches e.g. from psychology or discourse analysis, there is more concern for measurement and much less concern for ‘theory’ with the idea that TADA is for connecting textual data to domain theories (usually institutional or behavioural). A running theme in this course is that TADA is about extending traditional social science measurement strategies to deal with language.