Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2010 21:59:26 -0500
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Fw: new google literature tool
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

On 12/18/2010 6:22 PM, Ted White wrote:
> On 12/18/2010 3:50 PM, Mike B. wrote:
>
>>   On 12/18/2010 3:39 AM, ronkean at juno.com wrote:
>>
>>> In 500 Billion Words, a New Window on Culture
>>>
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/books/17words.html
>>>
>>> By PATRICIA COHEN
>>
>>   Wow! And just to prove that people never change, the first search I
>>   put in was for "fuck". Interesting result too. Especially if you
>>   extend the time back to 1500.
>>
>>   Second search was on George Carlin's "Seven Words". Very quick
>>   response. I wonder if I wasn't the first to ask, so it's in the
>>   cache? ;-)
>>
>>   In general, it looks like there was a long period of language
>>   repression from about 1725 until 1950. I wonder what that correlates
>>   with? Newspapers and publishing houses? Ending with TV and the Baby
>>   Boomers?
>
> Are you serious?  Are you unaware of the censorship which prevailed in
> this country until the LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER Supreme Court decision?
> The post office did not allow words like "fuck" to be used in anything
> which went through the mails.   Customs seized books (like Henry
> Miller's) published (in English) in France.  Etc.

Yes, I'm serious.  The data goes back to 1500, and ends in 2008.  It
covers English (American and British can be separated), French, German,
Russian, and Spanish too.  Your explanation is probably a large part of
the answer for American English, but I'm not sure how it would fully
explain British English for instance....which had a similar pattern.

If you put in "war", you can distinctly see the effects of WW1 and WW2.
  It's also interesting to put in "hell" and "god"...in most times since
the late 1600s it appears that the two are in opposition in the graph
(when one's use rises, use of the other declines), while before that
time they were more or less in synch.

I think the historians and sociologists are going to get a lot of fun
papers out of this service.

-- Mike B.