I would use built-in lists for any lists (uniform variable-length sequences of objects).

I would use namedtuple-derived classes to store data with known fixed sets of named fields. It's like objects, but immutable.

So you'd have your text.tokens[3].part_of_speech == NOUN, but won't have text.tokens[3].part_of_speech = NOUN. Immutability is often useful at preventing a whole class of errors, though.

I would use built-in lists for any lists (uniform variable-length sequences of objects).

I would use namedtuple-derived classes to store data with known fixed sets of named fields. It's like objects, but immutable.

So you'd have your text.tokens[3].part_of_speech == NOUN, but won't have text.tokens[3].part_of_speech = NOUN. Immutability is often useful at preventing a whole class of errors, though.

E.g.

from collection import namedtuple

Token = namedtuple('Token', ['part_of_speech', 'whatnot'])
Text = namedtuple('Text', ['tokens', 'metainfo', 'stats'])

# ...

json_doc = json.load(...)
tokens = []
for json_token in json_doc['tokens']:
  t = Token(json_token['part_of_speech'], json_token['whatnot'])
  # or even t = Token(**json_token)
  tokens.append(t)
...
return Text(tokens, ...)