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WIRED Magazine: Happy Words Trump Negativity in the English Language
- 09-06-2011
- By Kerime Barbara Toksu
Wired magazine's science blog featured the results of a study led by 2011 graduate Isabel Kloumann along with applied mathematicians Chris Danforth and Peter Dodds working in the University of Vermont’s Advanced Computing Center.
According to the story, "Happy Words Trump Negativity in the English Language," the researchers used "overwhelming mathematical force" to analyze 361 billion words used in four enormous textual databases.
A massive language study, spanning Google Books, Twitter, popular songs lyrics and The New York Times, has found that English tends to look on the bright side of things. Positive words outnumber the negative.
The findings are preliminary, but offer a glimpse of the origins and fundamental nature of English, and perhaps of language itself.
“In taking the view that humans are in part storytellers — Homo narrativus — we can look to language itself for quantifiable evidence of our social nature,” wrote mathematicians from Cornell University and the University of Vermont in an Aug. 29 arxiv paper.
Read more...
The findings are preliminary, but offer a glimpse of the origins and fundamental nature of English, and perhaps of language itself.
“In taking the view that humans are in part storytellers — Homo narrativus — we can look to language itself for quantifiable evidence of our social nature,” wrote mathematicians from Cornell University and the University of Vermont in an Aug. 29 arxiv paper.
Read more...
