Specificities and other applications of the Fisher exact test to textual data: What's the matter with lexical frequencies?

Overview & Synopsis

This article aims to make four contributions: (i) to disseminate internationally that the textometric measure of Specificity is a Fisher exact test; (ii) to explain why this measure is still state-of-the-art for textual data analysis; (iii) to review and respond to the main criticisms levelled at it; and (iv) to provide guidelines for its proper use.