Google N-gram viewer is a graphing tool used mainly to see how often a word was published in a book during a determined time. Although his tool is very useful to see how trending a word was in a certain period, it also has a few problems, such as the search terms can’t end with question marks and it’s case sensitive -you can deactivate it, but it won’t be as accurate as if you type it the “right” way-.

For this first Ngram I chose the words “football” and “baseball”, despite having baseball arisen in the mid-1830s, the first time we see a significant appearance is at 1880 which probably means that the sport wasn’t so popular back then. And we also can see a major increase of the word “football” – I also searched for “soccer”, but it isn’t a popular word, I guess that puts an end at the “soccer x football” discussion- and it’s probably due to the fact that the sport became really common.

For this second graph I chose the words “sex” and “romance”, in the 80s you can clearly see that sex is way more frequent than romance, the word “sex” in this case can be related either to the sexual relation or to the gender, but we’ll never know which meaning is more popular during this time; that’s actually a huge disadvantage of this tool, we can search for a word, but not for its different meanings amongst the years. Around 1890 “romance” surpasses “sex” and it might be because of the  romanticism, that started gaining popularity during the end if the 18th century.

Here is a link to Ted Underwood’s article, “How not to do things with words.”

How not to do things with words.

In his article “How not to do things with words,” Ted Underwood addresses problems some face while using Google Ngram. He writes that when using Ngrams, we must be aware of certain “methodological pitfalls.” One of these pitfalls is the evolution of words over time. He gives an example of the word ‘leadership.’ Today, one would not describe a leader as someone who is “loud-voiced” because “that’s just rude.” However, Homer describes a loud-voiced man as a good leader because “he can be heard over the din of speakers.”

Taking into consideration what Ted Underwood had to say, I used Google Ngrams to do two searches where each time I compared the prevalence of three different words.

Here, I searched Google Ngram for Muhammad, Jesus, and Moses. It was no surprise that Jesus was a more popular word. This is because, as said in class on Thursday, most books in the canon are written by white males. You can probably add ‘Christian’ to this. The trend shows the word Jesus coming up a lot before the 19^th century, then declining from around 1880 to 1970, and increasing from 1970 to the present. In addition to this, there are high points in 1812, 1831, 1843, and around 1870. Off the top of my head, I am not sure what the reason for this is. It is especially surprising seeing the name becoming more prevalent after 1970 since I would think we live in a more secularized society now than we did fifty years ago. The word ‘Moses’ has a similar trend, where it was more prevalent in the 19^th century, with a general decline as time passes. Since Moses is an important character in both the Christian and Jewish religions, it would make sense as to why he is as occupant as he is. I’m not sure how many Jewish writers are in the canon of literature from the 19^th or 20^th centuries, but there must be some; I would think much more so than there are of Muslim writers. This brings me to Muhammad, who really starts off with little to no prevalence until 1920, where he begins to increase. I wouldn’t think you’d find many Muslims in 19^th Century Europe. For centuries, the Muslim Moorish Empire ruled Spain, but by the 19^th Century, they were well gone. Most Muslims would probably be found in the Middle East and in Africa, which makes me think of one of my favorite novels to come out of Africa, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. This was published in the 1960’s, and I would be surprised if it isn’t in the canon of literature. Even though Things Fall Apart is not at all about Muhammad, and Achebe is not Muslim, it is still an important text because it was written by a native born Nigerian in English, and because it was a best seller. With the industrialization of Africa by white Christians well in place by the mid-20^th century, I would think that a door would be open to these Africans to have their published writings seen by the Western World. The same goes for India, especially during it’s time of independence from the British.

Here, I searched Google Ngram for radio, television, and cinema. Just from looking at the graph, we see that radio is more prevalent until the 1970s, when television takes the lead, with cinema almost always on the bottom. One of the reasons cinema is on the bottom despite the popularity of movies could be the word ‘cinema’ as oppose to the word ‘movie.’ If you were to make another graph where you switch the word ‘cinema’ with the word’ movie’ you would see the ending prevalence to be almost double. There is not much mystery as to the reason for these three words to be more prevalent in some times and less prevalent in others though. The radio was invented in the early 19^th century, but it didn’t have a wide-spread popular use until the late 19^th century into the early 20^th century. The graph shows us ‘radio’ growing more and more prevalent until the 1940’s, where it peaks and starts to decline. ‘Television’ begins to incline starting at around 1920, all the way to 2000 – the same goes for cinema. At around 1975, ‘radio’ and ‘television’ become equal, where afterwards ‘radio’ flattens out while ‘television’ continues to increase. This seems to follow history, where television becomes more popular than radio, while radio is still used. Of course, it’s important to remember that this graph is a representation of words used in a certain group of books, not practical uses of individual devices.

In conclusion, Google Ngrams is a great tool that can create a very helpful and nifty visual. To top it all off, it’s also incredibly user friendly, and requires little effort. Of course you cannot get everything you may need to from Ngrams. For instance, my second graph showed me that radio was always more prevalent than cinema, but it did not tell me why. To figure out why you would have to do independent research. It’s also important to understand that Google Ngrams is not always a safe bet. As Underwood said, you can not always count on getting a reliable graph by simply using a good list of words. So, Ngrams is great, but, like many tools, it is not perfect and absolute.

For this Google Ngram I chose the two topics of Horror and Romance. I was trying to see what kind of genre was more popular back then. if you look at the Ngram the genre Horror is clearly the winner of being more popular. I thought it was pretty neat that the horror category was more popular considering Romeo and Juliet was only made 300 years before this time. If that play is still popular now I could only imagine how popular it was back then as well. I can also see how people were always telling scary stories and what not for decades. A lot more so then the romantic scene.

 

My second Ngram consists of the two most popular sports in the 1800s, Cricket and the European version of soccer, Football. What I found very interesting was that soccer was really not too popular until around 1880. It’s pretty funny to see that both sports started to have the same patterns at around 1875. Both of the graphs going up and down in a similar shape. It leads me to believe that more and more people are joining the fan base of each sport every year. Of course you’re going to be loosing some people but even though the chart goes down in some areas, its still increasing as well. More people were joining the fan bases then the people who were leaving. Now the word cricket could be referred to the insect as well, not just the sport. In this case though I believe it has to do with mainly the sport because then the chart would be ll over the place. Instead it stays steady with the sport football, which has me believing that it  deals with mostly the sport.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being that Google Ngrams works with only the books that are on Google Books, it was of interest to see what results would the tool would provide should another language be used. Switching the settings of the search to Google’s French corpus, the three words, “liberté,” “égalité,” and “fraternité” were searched together as a point of departure. The three words make up the national slogan of France (liberty, equality, brotherhood), with strong associations to the French Revolution.

French history displays several iterations of leaders and types of government, beginning with the overthrow of the Monarchy. Tracking the words from 1700 to 1900, “liberté” has remained the most used by a wide margin, with “égalité” and “fraternité” remaining much closer to one another. For a long while, “fraternité” hardly shows up at all. Around 1740, “liberté” and “égalité” begin to augment in usage, though “égalité” peters out without a huge amount of growth, while “liberté” continues it’s first large assent until about 1766. This initial breakout shows the impact of the period of the enlightenment in France, with writers discussing essential freedoms, such as person freedom, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in particular had affirmed that all were born free and equal in rights.

Still under the Monarchy, “liberté” remains in descent until the death of Louis XV and thus, the crowning of Louis XVI in 1774 — the last king of the ancient regime. “Liberté” witnesses the beginning of a small increase in usage after 1776, where France’s involvement helping to fight the English during the American Revolution impacted their own views of government. Then, from 1784 – 1792, all three see a significant jump, with that of “liberté” being the largest of all. During this time frame, France saw the Storming of Bastille in 1789, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen by l’Assemblée Nationale and the March on Versailles in 1789. The suspension of the king by l’Assemblée then took place in 1790, the proclamation of the Republic in 1792, and the execution of Louis XVI in 1793.

After the fall of the Monarchy, the establishment of the Republic, and the execution of Louis XVI, “liberté” falls tremendously until 1811, where it starts to pick back up again. During this span of time, France saw the First Republic, the Directory, and the Consulate. Ngrams can show the frequency of leaders during these periods of government as well, with compositions giving insight to the Directory, where power was shared between several men.

In 1811, when “liberté” becomes increasingly used once again, Napoleon I began to expand his empire by placing members of his family in rule of various European states. The word goes in waves of usage as France swings from the Empire, to the Restoration, the Monarchy (again), the Second Republic, the Second Empire, and finally the Third Republic in 1871. After this, the use of the word begins to average out, remaining prevalent but not appearing in series of staccato bursts.

Through Ngrams, it’s possible to see not only a timeline of historic events, as with the rumblings leading up to different parts within the French Revolution, but how they compare with those in other countries. The French Revolution had been in part inspired by the role France played in their assisting the American Revolution. Delving into more in depth functions of Ngrams, it’s possible to access different corpuses of text. Comparing the English and French words for “revolution,” and “liberty,” it’s observable how each term manifested itself. In both languages, “liberty” trumps revolution, and “liberté” remains more frequent than “liberty” save for a short spell from 1808 – 1810.

The richness of the insight Ngrams has provided is lost without historical context. In this case, the combination yields a richer understanding of the French Revolution, how it changed through time, and the intensity of similar words being used in other nations. Revealing curious intersecting paths over time, Ngrams effectively provokes further queries.

— Megan Doty

After reading the article of “how not to do things with words” by Ted Underwood, it got me thinking a lot more about language. I decided to play around then with the Google Ngrams. I also, was trying to think of things in context of the 19th century. I did the word play a few times. And sometimes, it did not show anything impressive. That was a little disappointing because I really thought there would be more activity. I tried things like “cricket, baseball”, and “tea, crumpets” things like that to start off with. Nothing crazy, then I expanded my searches the graph below was my first search for “cricket,baseball”. As expected cricket was a lot higher on the graph than baseball. Because in the early 1800s

 

 

The top graph, I searched “men,women”, I was not that surprised that men came up more than women. And the bottom graph, I looked up “death,birth”, following the “men,women” graph, I was not surprised that death came up more than birth. It seems like in the 19th century, men and murders were more of a literature topic than women and babies.

 

 

This graph, I wanted to look at the genre of literature, I looked up “mystery,romance”. I thought it was really interesting that romance was underneath mystery but they followed really close patterns. It seems like there were popular readings for both men and women who could read.

 

Searching these words helped me see that there are some patterns within word choices but it does not help me understand more about the context of these words. It can be one of those pitfalls where the programs are failing us.

 

 

 

 

Google Ngram provides a methodically chromatic and interpretive conception of visualizations of books in various time periods. It is quite interesting to see what types of words and concepts are prevalent in variant centuries. In the earlier periods, people were much more conformist and conventional then the later epochs of time. Distinctive and dissimilar concepts are utilized at different times. However, one has to be extremely meticulous when utilizing Google Ngrams, as it is highly case sensitive and can change one’s results drastically. Besides this negative quality, it is a very expedient and beneficial tool that can be used for a numerous amount of purposes.

For my first graph, I wanted to see what would be the visualization with the words “sex” and “marriage”. I was theorizing that marriage would be more popular in the 1800s to late 1900s as people were quite traditional and did not believe in adultery. I thought sex would become more and more popular as time passed and as generations modernized. So I searched for those two words and came up with this graph:

Another highly critical and crucial comparison that would be interesting to visualize are birth and abortion. It would be quite beneficial contain a perspective of how the legal system and the morality was like during the earlier 1800s and 1900s. As adultery was not common in the earlier centuries, abortion would not exist to be popular as well due to the traditions of child bearing and having a large number of children. The issue of abortion would have become more familiar in the 2000s, as it would keep on increasing throughout the graph. Here is the visualization:

Google Ngrams provided an interesting visualization when comparing the Romantic Era and Age of Enlightenment during the 19th century.  When I first started typing in words into Ngram, it was very interesting to see how different ways you phrase a word can drastically change the graph.  Based on this, I have come to realize that you have to be quite specific about what you want to search as simple additions, subtractions, and changes of word(s) can impact your graphical result.  Also, adding “case-insensitive” changes the graph  as well.  In order for mine to make more sense, I added “case-insensitive” because when I didn’t have it, the Enlightenment line was all flat except for tiny spikes around 1880 and 1890.

On my graph, it makes sense that the Romantic Era spiked significantly between 1830 and 1850, and the Age of Enlightenment did not make any progress until the later part of the 1800s.  The Romantic Era was a response to the Enlightenment Movement; it was a rebellion of sorts against scientific and logical thinking. So, it would make sense that the Romantic Era would be more popular then the Age of Enlightenment.  The Enlightenment’s highlight was during the 18th century, and did not become revived again until around the 20th century. The Romantic Era touched many areas of life in the 19th century: art, architecture, music, and most importantly literature. Many famous Romantic authors and poets emerged throughout this time period and provided a huge influence and impact on the Romantic Era. Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats were some of the most famous Romantic poets.  Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters were other authors that came into popularity. These famous authors contributed so much to the Romantic Era, and as evident by the graph, helped it spike throughout the 19th century.

My second graph depicts the horse and buggy compared to the automobile. As the primary mode of transportation, the horse and buggy was what almost everyone drove during the beginning of the 19th century. Although it was used often, the horse and buggy was best suited for short distance.  But the creation of the automobile changed that. In 1769 the first steam powered automobile was created by a man named Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot and in 1807 François Isaac de Rivaz designed the first car with an internal combustion engine powered by hydrogen.  By 1886 the automobile was powered by petrol, or gasoline, curtesy of Karl Benz who called it the Benz Patent-Motorwagon.  The first electrically powered car did not come around until the turn of the 20th century.  The more popular the automobile became, the more people began to use it; so, as a result the horse and buggy went down in popularity while the automobile rose.