Relating social and symbolic relations in quantitative text analysis. A study of parliamentary discourse in the Weimar Republic

•We explore three ways in which relations between symbols and between social actors are intertwined.•Socio-symbolic constellations pit actors and symbols by patterns of co-usage.•Social relationships are characterized by the symbolic interaction between actors.•We analyze parliamentary discourse in the Weimar Republic on three interrelated levels.•The Weimar Republic was riven by antagonisms between Left and Right, and between supporters and enemies of democracy. Social relations between actors and symbolic relations between concepts or ideas are interwoven in discourse. We conceptually distinguish three approaches that construct relations between symbols with different connections to social structures. These three approaches are illustrated empirically with automated text analyses of the parliamentary proceedings of the Weimar Republic in Germany (1919-1933). First, cultural relations between symbols, as reconstructed from co-occurrences of terms in large text corpora, are supposedly widely shared in a social context. In this sense, we analyze a set of key terms in Weimar political discourse around the central term “Volk” (“people”). These fall into five word communities, each of them representing a different way of conceiving politics. Secondly, symbolic practices are related to actors positioning themselves through them in socio-symbolic constellations. We reconstruct such a constellation from the usage of key terms of Weimar parliamentary discourse by the eight major political parties in their speeches, with different parties signaling their ideological positions through these terms. Thirdly, the use of symbols in interaction characterizes social relationships between actors. In this vein, the ties between the Weimar parties show distinct patterns of hostility or support in their interjections and reactions to each other’s speeches. The second and the third analyses reveal a two-dimensional patterning of the Weimar political landscape, with the traditional Left-Right dimension complemented by an opposition of forces supporting or rejecting the republic. Also, the similarities in word usage by parties correspond fairly well to the support or hostility in their interjections and reactions.