According to the textbook definition, a topic model aims to uncover the underlying topics of a corpus. Despite its widespread use across disciplines, the nature of these ‘topics’ has remained relatively underdefined. This research note attempts to fill this gap, drawing on empirical evidence to elucidate the practical application of the model. We argue that the frequency of terms within texts is influenced not only by their theme but also by factors such as genre and context, thus extending the notion of ‘latent topics’ beyond referential-semantic boundaries to include pragmatic considerations. Through case studies focusing on different genres, such as parliamentary speeches and online forums, we demonstrate the importance of pragmatics, which is often overlooked in well-known early applications that deal predominantly with formal written texts such as newspaper articles or academic papers.
Németh et al. (2024) studied this question.