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Set the text content language and stop words

 

The text content language and stop word lists are managed via project properties. Project properties' settings apply to every user who accesses the project.

This topic is about changing the settings to match your text content language. If you want to know about changing the interface language to French, German or Spanish (Mexico), refer to Understand how the interface language is determined.

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Why set the text content language?

NVivo provides the following text content languages: Chinese, English (UK), English (US), French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.  

Each text content language has an associated dictionary which allows you to find words with the same stem when you run Text Search or Word Frequency queries.

Each text content language also has an associated 'stop word' list. The words in the stop word list are filtered out (removed) when you run a Text Search or Word Frequency query.

Before you run Text Search or Word Frequency queries, make sure that the text content language is set to match the language of your source materials—refer to Set the text content language for detailed instructions.  If the language of your source materials is not available as a text content language, you should set the text content language to 'Other'.

NOTE  

  • For Chinese and Japanese text content, stop words are not used to filter out content when running Text Search or Word Frequency queries.

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What stop words are provided by default?

NVivo provides default stop words for English (UK), English (US), French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. The default stop words are less significant words like conjunctions or prepositions, that may not be meaningful to your analysis. You can view the stop words associated with each language, and you can customize the stop words by adding or removing words from the stop word list.

NVivo does not provide default stop words for Chinese or Japanese, but you can add your own stop words for these languages.

The text content language setting in your project, determines which list of stop words is in use—for example, the English (US) stop words list, or the Spanish stop words list. If the language of your source materials is not available in the Text content language list, you should select 'Other'. By default, the stop word list for the language 'Other' is empty—you can add your own words to create a stop word list to suit the language of your sources.

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Set the text content language for your project

  1. Choose File > Project Properties, and click General and then select the language used in your sources from the Text content language pop-up menu. 

NOTE  

  • If the language used in your sources is not available in the Text content language list, select the language 'Other'. By default, the stop word list for the language 'Other' is empty—you can add your own words to create a stop word list to suit the language of your sources.

  • You can also set the default text content language that will apply to any future projects you create in NVivo preferences (on the Text pane).

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View, add or remove stop words

  1. Choose File > Project Properties, click General and then click the Stop Words button.

You can add or remove words from the stop word list. Each word must be separated by a space.

NOTE 

  • When you close the dialog, the stop words list is sorted into alphabetical order—if you add words at the end of the list, they will be moved into their alphabetical position within the list.   

  • You can also add stop words by selecting words displayed in the results of a Word Frequency query. Select the word you want to exclude from the query results, then click Add to Stop Words List, in the Actions group on the Query tab.

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Restore the default stop words

CAUTION  If you restore the default stop word list for a text content language, any additional words that you have added to the stop word list are removed.

  1. Choose File > Project Properties, click General and then click the Stop Words button.

  2. Click Restore Defaults, and then click OK.

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