Changes in society and language
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Gerold Schneider
Abstract
This study addresses how societal and linguistic changes can be detected using historical corpora, with the topics of poverty and industrial revolution as a case study, based on large historical corpora, in particular EEBO, and CLMET3.0. The results, based on a rich array of state-of-the art statistical approaches (such as kernel density estimation), show how poverty, industrial revolution, and urbanization are associated through, for instance, the associations of war, religion, family, poverty, and suffering. The study also discusses the importance of data size and cleanness, the temptations of distant reading, and the necessity for validating the discovered patterns in close reading and distant reading in interaction.
Abstract
This study addresses how societal and linguistic changes can be detected using historical corpora, with the topics of poverty and industrial revolution as a case study, based on large historical corpora, in particular EEBO, and CLMET3.0. The results, based on a rich array of state-of-the art statistical approaches (such as kernel density estimation), show how poverty, industrial revolution, and urbanization are associated through, for instance, the associations of war, religion, family, poverty, and suffering. The study also discusses the importance of data size and cleanness, the temptations of distant reading, and the necessity for validating the discovered patterns in close reading and distant reading in interaction.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction ix
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Part I. Changing society
- The great temptation 3
- Changes in society and language 29
- Finding evidence for a changing society 57
- Semantic neology 79
- From burden to threat 113
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Part II. Changing language
- That’s absolutely fine 143
- Two sides of the same coin? 169
- So-called - ingly adverbs in Late Middle and Early Modern English 199
- Analyzing change in the American English amplifier system in the fiction genre 223
- The development and pragmatic function of a non-inference marker 251
- Changes in transitivity and reflexive uses of sit ( me / myself down ) in Early and Late Modern English 277
- Index 303
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction ix
-
Part I. Changing society
- The great temptation 3
- Changes in society and language 29
- Finding evidence for a changing society 57
- Semantic neology 79
- From burden to threat 113
-
Part II. Changing language
- That’s absolutely fine 143
- Two sides of the same coin? 169
- So-called - ingly adverbs in Late Middle and Early Modern English 199
- Analyzing change in the American English amplifier system in the fiction genre 223
- The development and pragmatic function of a non-inference marker 251
- Changes in transitivity and reflexive uses of sit ( me / myself down ) in Early and Late Modern English 277
- Index 303
