Mapping co-word structures: A comparison of multidimensional scaling and leximappe

The LEXIMAPPE method and Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) are discussed as methods to visualize (‘map’) characteristics of structures of word-occurrence (‘co-word’) relations. Utilization of MDS is proposed as an alternative mapping method able to circumvent problematic features of LEXIMAPPE maps of the total co-word structure. A comparison of both methods on the same ‘real-life’ co-word matrix demonstrates topological advantages of an extended MDS-mapping.