The expression of emotions in 20th century books

Alberto Acerbi; Vasileios Lampos; Philip Garnett; R. Alexander Bentley

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059030

The expression of emotions in 20th century books

Alberto Acerbi^*, Vasileios Lampos, Philip Garnett, R. Alexander Bentley

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review

108 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We report here trends in the usage of 'mood' words, i.e. words carrying emotional content, in 20th century English language books, using the data set provided by Google that includes word frequencies in roughly 4% of all books published up to the year 2008. We find evidence for distinct historical periods of positive and negative moods, underlain by a general decrease in the use of emotion-related words through time. Finally, we show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more 'emotional' than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language.

Original language	English
Article number	59030
Number of pages	6
Journal	PLoS ONE
Volume	8
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0059030
Publication status	Published - 20 Mar 2013

Keywords

CULTURAL-EVOLUTION
RANDOM DRIFT
LANGUAGE
DIVERSITY
SCIENCE
RATES

Access to Document

10.1371/journal.pone.0059030

Handle.net

Persistent link

Cite this

@article{6266482e14454ffe8d8911abd5f1c8bc,

title = "The expression of emotions in 20th century books",

abstract = "We report here trends in the usage of 'mood' words, i.e. words carrying emotional content, in 20th century English language books, using the data set provided by Google that includes word frequencies in roughly 4% of all books published up to the year 2008. We find evidence for distinct historical periods of positive and negative moods, underlain by a general decrease in the use of emotion-related words through time. Finally, we show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more 'emotional' than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language.",

keywords = "CULTURAL-EVOLUTION, RANDOM DRIFT, LANGUAGE, DIVERSITY, SCIENCE, RATES",

author = "Alberto Acerbi and Vasileios Lampos and Philip Garnett and Bentley, {R. Alexander}",

year = "2013",

month = mar,

day = "20",

doi = "10.1371/journal.pone.0059030",

language = "English",

volume = "8",

journal = "PLoS ONE",

issn = "1932-6203",

publisher = "Public Library of Science",

number = "3",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - The expression of emotions in 20th century books

AU - Acerbi, Alberto

AU - Lampos, Vasileios

AU - Garnett, Philip

AU - Bentley, R. Alexander

PY - 2013/3/20

Y1 - 2013/3/20

N2 - We report here trends in the usage of 'mood' words, i.e. words carrying emotional content, in 20th century English language books, using the data set provided by Google that includes word frequencies in roughly 4% of all books published up to the year 2008. We find evidence for distinct historical periods of positive and negative moods, underlain by a general decrease in the use of emotion-related words through time. Finally, we show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more 'emotional' than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language.

AB - We report here trends in the usage of 'mood' words, i.e. words carrying emotional content, in 20th century English language books, using the data set provided by Google that includes word frequencies in roughly 4% of all books published up to the year 2008. We find evidence for distinct historical periods of positive and negative moods, underlain by a general decrease in the use of emotion-related words through time. Finally, we show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more 'emotional' than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language.

KW - CULTURAL-EVOLUTION

KW - RANDOM DRIFT

KW - LANGUAGE

KW - DIVERSITY

KW - SCIENCE

KW - RATES

U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0059030

DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0059030

M3 - Article (Academic Journal)

C2 - 23527080

SN - 1932-6203

VL - 8

JO - PLoS ONE

JF - PLoS ONE

IS - 3

M1 - 59030

ER -

The expression of emotions in 20th century books

Abstract

Keywords

Access to Document

Handle.net

Fingerprint

Cite this