Abstract
This paper explores two important ways in which the practice of close reading differs from the
technique of natural language processing, the use of computer programming to decode, process,
and replicate messages within a human language. It does so in order to highlight distinctive
features of close reading that are not replicated by natural language processing. The first point of
distinction concerns the nature of the meaning generated in each case. While natural language
processing proceeds on the principle that a text’s meaning can be deciphered by applying the
rules governing the language in which the text is written, close reading is premised on the idea
that this meaning lies in the interplay that the text prompts within readers. While the semantic
theory of meaning upon which natural language processing programs are based is often taken for
granted today, I draw from phenomenological and hermeneutic theories, particularly Wolfgang
Iser and Hans-Georg Gadamer, to explain why a different theory of meaning is necessary for
understanding the meaning generated by close reading. Second, while natural language processing
programs are considered successful when they generate what epistemologists call true
beliefs about a text, I argue that close reading aims first and foremost at the development, not of
true belief, but of understanding. To develop this distinction, I draw from recent scholarship on
the epistemology of education, including work by Duncan Pritchard, to explain how understanding
differs from true belief and why attainment of the latter is less educationally significant than
the former.