Vocabulary richness and thematic concentration in internet fetish fantasies and literary short stories
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Andrew Wilson
Abstract
This paper applies recent developments in quantitative linguistics to a key theoretical question from sexology, namely: Is fetishism fundamentally a stereotypical or a creative phenomenon? If it is stereotypical and repetitive, then it can be hypothesized that narratives of fetish fantasies will demonstrate a low degree of vocabulary richness and a high degree of thematic concentration. To test these hypotheses, the present study compares two sets of online fetish fantasy stories (n = 11) with a control sample of short stories by an established literary author, D.H. Lawrence (n = 10), using the measures of vocabulary richness and thematic concentration proposed by Popescu & Altmann (2006) and Popescu, Best & Altmann (2007). The results show that one set of fetish fantasies has a lower degree of vocabulary richness than the control sample, but the other set does not. No significant difference is detected between the three samples with regard to thematic concentration. Overall, the fetish fantasies seem to differ from the control texts only in so far as at least one fetish-related word appears amongst the thematic words for each story. It seems likely that any other quantitative stylistic variations in fetish fantasies are not connected with the phenomenon of fetishism itself. However, further work could usefully investigate the question with regard to text-linguistic features
© 2014 Akademie Verlag GmbH, Markgrafenstr. 12-14, 10969 Berlin.
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- On de Saussure’s principle of linearity and visualization of language structures
- On the use of „Kampfhund“ in German
- Communicating European Values in Institutional Discourse: A statistical model for the analysis of citizens’ perception of EU
- Pitfalls of the Transitivity Hypothesis: Transitivity in Conversation and Written Language in Czech
- Sentence length and style. The case of two contemporary Bengali authors viz Lila Mazumdar and Sunil Gangopadhyaya
- A Synergetic Linguistic Study on Compounding Propensity in technical English
- The Relationship between Word Length and Frequency in Indian Languages
- Linearity, Calligraphy and Syntax in the Rongorongo Script
- Vocabulary richness and thematic concentration in internet fetish fantasies and literary short stories
- REPORTS ABOUT SCIENTIFIC PROJECTS. Call for Cooperation Grammatische Variation in deutschsprachigen Fachtexten Projektskizze
- REVIEWS. Statistik für Sprachwissenschaftler
- ADDRESSES OF MEMBERS OF EDITORIAL BOARD
