Latest version of webdriver.js from Selenium does have
getProperty method, which should be able to retrieve textContent and innerText properties. If you're using an older version of webdriver.js, you can either upgrade to a newer version, or you can run simple JavaScript snippet in Chrome to retrieve properties, e.g., driver.executeScript('return arguments[0].textContent', element).
I'm sorry for all the inconvenience this change has caused, but the previous behavior of ChromeDriver's getAttribute didn't comply with W3C standard, and was causing problems for users who expect standard-compliant WebDriver implementation.