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Research tool record. This page documents the tool and its method. The interactive application is not embedded, and this page does not accept material for analysis.

Diagnostic Reading guide →
Find the reading materials, coding manual, and supporting research for this experimental tool.

Summary ↓ · Procedure ↓ · Worked example ↓ · Worksheet ↓ · Citation ↓

Record at a glance

• Purpose: Locate how critical prose assigns meaning, speaks for viewers, and qualifies its authority.
• Responsibility: Dorian Vale; maintained by Museum of One.
• Tool version: v.2, as named in the published title.
• Method reference: Canonical Rule Set v2.0, as identified in this record. Consult the cited coding manual for operational definitions.
• Research status: Experimental instrument; related single-coder pilot published.
• Documentation revised: 17 October 2026. This dates the record, not a new tool release.

Evidence status: The related pilot reports approximate counts by one coder. It does not establish independent validation of this tool or formal inter-rater reliability.

Linguistic Diagnostics Analysis examines the rhetorical posture of art criticism. It asks how an account distributes authority between the critic, the artwork, and the reader. Its concern is not whether the prose expresses a positive or negative opinion, but how its language describes, assigns meaning, speaks for others, and acknowledges its own limits.

What it does

The tool record identifies four principal dimensions in the Canonical Rule Set v2.0:

• Rhetorical Density (RD): examines the concentration of figurative and abstract language. Density is a feature to inspect in context, not an automatic fault.
• Interpretive Load (ILI): examines the relation between meaning-assignment and sensory description. It makes the transition from an observed feature to an interpretive claim easier to locate.
• Viewer Displacement (VDR): examines passages in which the critic speaks on the viewer’s behalf. It asks where an account permits a reader’s own encounter and where it prescribes one.
• Ethical Proximity (EPS): examines qualifications, acknowledged uncertainty, and other limits placed on a claim. These signals require contextual reading; cautious wording alone does not establish ethical responsibility.

How the method works

The documented design uses assisted analysis to identify linguistic features and applies explicit rules to produce a diagnostic profile. Such a profile is useful only when its coding decisions can be traced back to passages in the source. Differences between readings should become questions about evidence, definitions, and exclusions rather than a contest over a final score.

Procedure at a glance

Worked example

Illustration only. This constructed example is not a software run, validation result, or report of participant findings.

The red band crosses the panel. Every viewer feels the wound of exile. Perhaps the interrupted edge complicates that claim.

• Description and inference: The red band is described before the prose assigns exile as its meaning. That assignment needs evidence not supplied by the sentence.
• Viewer displacement: Every viewer attributes the same feeling to an entire audience. This is a candidate passage for VDR coding, not evidence of what viewers actually felt.
• Qualification: Perhaps qualifies the final claim. One cautious word does not cancel the earlier universal assertion or establish a favourable EPS result.

What this establishes: The reading identifies passages to code and contest. No RD, ILI, VDR, or EPS values are calculated here; a valid calculation would require the declared units, denominators, exclusions, and source context.

Why it belongs to Post-Interpretive Criticism

PIC treats criticism as an intervention in an encounter, not a transparent report about a passive object. A critic can assign a work a fixed meaning, replace a viewer’s response, or allow uncertainty to remain consequential. Linguistic Diagnostics examines those operations in the prose itself. It turns the ethical demand for restraint into specific questions that another reader can challenge.

What it can and cannot establish

The tool can support comparative reading and make rhetorical choices more explicit. It cannot decide what an artwork means, infer an author’s private motives, or rank the moral worth of critics. Metaphor, explanation, and confidence are not inherently violations. Their force depends on the passage, its evidence, its genre, and what it claims to authorize.

Methodological context

Measuring Proximity sets out the diagnostic proposal. Quantifying Critical Posture records a single-coder pilot, not independent validation. The companion Phenomenological Indices Analysis examines a different set of proposed relations.

Research worksheet

Download the editable worksheet to retain the source passage, coding units, decisions, exclusions, uncertainty, and review notes for a manual reading. Duplicate the coding log for additional passages.

Worksheet version 1.0 · 17 October 2026. This documentation aid does not replace the cited coding manual, introduce a new tool version, or establish reliability.

Citation and revision

Suggested citation. Select and copy the following text:

Vale, Dorian. Linguistic Diagnostics Analysis Tool v.2. Museum of One, 2026. Research tool record; documentation revised 17 October 2026. https://www.museumofone.art/linguistic-diagnostics-analysis/

Methodological reference: Diagnostics Without Possession. Coding rules and reliability procedures are not themselves a completed validation study.

Revision note · 17 October 2026. Added the record summary, procedure diagram, constructed example, evidence-status distinction, and suggested citation. This is a documentation revision. No new software release, participant findings, or validation result is announced.

Documentation addition · 17 October 2026. Added the editable research worksheet and a direct section link. The tool title and methodological rules are unchanged.

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