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Talk:Essay:Best New Conservative Words (view source)
Revision as of 13:33, September 10, 2013
, 13:33, September 10, 2013statistical approach
:::Check out the usage of the word "Schlafly" [http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=schlafly&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= HERE]. Is Schlafly a conservative word? :) [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 05:00, 9 September 2013 (EDT)
:::Check out the usage of the word "Schlafly" [http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=schlafly&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= HERE]. Is Schlafly a conservative word? :) [[User:Conservative|Conservative]] 05:00, 9 September 2013 (EDT)
I'm not sure I'm following the logic here. According to Mr. Schlafly's hypothesis, the total number of conservative words are increasing over time, not necessarily the individual usage of a particular word. Also as the number of words that describe the same concept increase, odds that a particular word will be employed would be expected to decrease. It's possible that certain words fall in and out of favor regardless of the concept they embody. I think it's unwise to announce the falsification of a hypothesis based on the results of a Google analysis. After all, the same tool also shows a sharp decline in "heliocentrism". --[[User:DonnyC|DonnyC]] 09:55, 9 September 2013 (EDT)
I'm not sure I'm following the logic here. According to Mr. Schlafly's hypothesis, the total number of conservative words are increasing over time, not necessarily the individual usage of a particular word. Also as the number of words that describe the same concept increase, odds that a particular word will be employed would be expected to decrease. It's possible that certain words fall in and out of favor regardless of the concept they embody. I think it's unwise to announce the falsification of a hypothesis based on the results of a Google analysis. After all, the same tool also shows a sharp decline in "heliocentrism". --[[User:DonnyC|DonnyC]] 09:55, 9 September 2013 (EDT)
==Statistical approach==
Perhaps we could find a number of English dictionaries compiled at various times in history and graph the total number of dictionary entries in comparison with the number of conservative words at those points in time. A better measure might be the ratio of conservative words/total number of dictionary entries rather than the absolute number of conservative words. One theory is that there were fewer words in the English language, and words had not yet entered the language to describe economic concepts which were still evident and accepted as fact. There is no reason to believe that society in the 1600s and 1700s were less conservative than today, but rather they did not have specialized words to discuss the issues of that day. Thanks, [[User:Wschact|Wschact]] 09:33, 10 September 2013 (EDT)