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Full-text American versions of the Times charts

Dec 04 2010

This verges on unreflective datadumping: but because its easy and I think people might find it interesting, Im going to drop in some of my own charts for total word use in 30,000 books by the largest American publishers on the same terms for which the Times published Cohens charts of title word counts. Ive tossed in a couple extra words where it seems interestingincluding some alternate word-forms that tell a story, using a perl word-stemming algorithm I set up the other day that works fairly well. My charts run from 1830 (there just arent many American books from before, and even the data from the 30s is a little screwy) to 1922 (the date that digital history endsthank you, Sonny Bono.) In some cases, (that 1874 peak for science), the American and British trends are surprisingly close. Sometimes, they arent.

This is pretty close to Cohens chart, and I dont have much to add. In looking at various words that end in -ism, I got some sense earlier of how individual religious discussionsprobably largely in historypeak at substantially different times. But I dont quite have the expertise in American religious history to fully interpret that data, so I wont try to plug any of it in.

The decline here is not as pronounced in the British titles, and the word itself is much less common. If its as true for British texts as American texts, it would suggest that decline was more about conventions for naming books than a retreat from universalism per se. There are a lot more movies with the word return in their title these days than there used to be, but that doesnt portend some resurgence of Vico.

The twin surprises here are the steady rise and how late it beginsin Cohens title numbers, industry shoots up to about 1850 and then stays mostly level. I have no idea whether this is an artifact of usage in books, or if it actually reflects different patterns of industrialization between the two countries. Probably a little of both.

This is one of the words that just cries out for some analysis of comparative word usage at the beginning and the end of the frame: theres no way the context for science is the same in 1830 and 1920, even if the rate of incidence is.

I havent been using the same scale on these charts, but since scale was the point for evil, here are some together. In American full texts, unlike in Victorian titles, evil is a fairly common word, thought it does show a slight downward trend: Industrial and science arent much more common at the end. And of course, God alone is the most high.

Comments:

Ben - Continued rafts of good material (heres

Hank - Dec 6, 2010

Ben - Continued rafts of good material (heres hoping it wont dry up after a return to domestic normalcy in a few months?). I agree about science, and Id like to talk more about this soon.

@gwijthoff (Princeton English) has been doing some interesting thinking on this, re: the word Gadget and changing meanings over time, with simple periodized google-searches and then use tags to map change over time.

For now, lets see some thoughts on how to tag for meaning before we get full genre-indexing for the database!

2.0 - From the Times caption for the scien

Hank - Dec 0, 2010

2.0 -

From the Times caption for the science graph:

Reaching a peak in 1874, its use shows the ages growing interest in science but may also reflect changes in the words meaning. By the mid-19th century the word science was increasingly associated with the natural sciences.

  1. Why is but the conjunction for the first sentence - dont these go hand-in-hand?

  2. Where is this interpretation about natural sciences coming from, and how does it help explain the noted uptick?

I think there are two supposed to be two counter-t

Ben - Dec 1, 2010

I think there are two supposed to be two counter-trends, hence the but: an overall growth in science, but a narrowing in meaning. Its sort of an apology for science not completely taking the world by storm as technology does.

Isnt that commonplace about the natural sciences becoming the sciencesI couldnt source it, but I know back in an Anne Blair class we read a lot of comparative epistemologies from the 12-13C on, and this just seemed to be assumed. Arnold comes in to oppose the Humanitiesthis is bastardized memories of freshman year, but isnt it just some story about Huxley vs. Arnold prefiguring the CP Snow Two Cultures split, as opposed to Geisteswissenschaften and all that jazz? Maybe its a little less true in the US, with stronger connections to German universities, but its still familiar here, right?

I resent the implication, Hank, that I m

Anne - Dec 1, 2010

I resent the implication, Hank, that I might somehow imperil Bens progress.

Benits Ann Blair. Takes one to know one.

I am really impressed from your imaginative thinki

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