Databases like the Google Books Corpus can also be used to follow text over time. For example, as the women’s suffrage movement grew around 1910, words relating to women’s rights grew in popularity and frequency of usage. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Words from Women’s Suffrage”
We talked about corpora earlier.
These are the big collection of texts that let you find interesting things about words and language.
Yeah, database diving.
Database diving.
I love it.
Well, one of the things that I talked about was the word battered and how it was associated with the word suitcase.
And a more serious note, you can also use this kind of big database that has a lot of text over time to find out what people are talking about over a particular period. And so you’ll find, for example, that the phrase battered women doesn’t really start to occur very much in English until 1910.
And then you can see the interest level rise as the frequency level rises. 1910? I would have thought it was much later. Interesting.
Yeah, it begins to be talked about as the women’s movement becomes strong, as the suffrage movement becomes strong, as all of these things start to arise. Then the idea that it’s not right for a husband to beat his wife also becomes well-known.
And you can see these kinds of things in the historical data gathered in the corpora.
Wow, what a window on history.
If you’d like a little bit more information about the corpora, drop us a line, words@waywordradio.org.
And we’re here to take your questions about language, slang, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and more, 877-929-9673.
