Isn’t the weather beautiful today? Time for a cup of coffee? The way someone speaks and the words they use tell us a lot about where that person is from, their social background, and even their age. Language both reflects and shapes society; As a linguist, it’s my job to find out how this happens.
One way to do this is to analyze large collections of languages that linguists call corpora (or “bodies”). By measuring the frequency of words we can determine what a particular society or group prioritizes and values.
My colleague Dana Gablesova from Lancaster University and I analyzed every word in the British National Corpus 2014 while researching a new frequency dictionary of British English.
A corpus is a 100 million word sample of the existing language. It covers language used in informal conversation, fiction, newspapers, magazines, academic writings and online resources between 2010 and 2020. It’s free and open to everyone on #LancsBox and LancsLex. Here are five frequently discussed topics and some of the words that describe them (including how many times they appear per million words).
1. Time and punctuality
According to our analysis, “year” and “time” are the two most frequently used nouns in British English, occurring 1,963 and 1,898 times per million words respectively. People talk and write about them over and over (and over) again, all year long. The idea of time is closely linked to punctuality, something highly valued in Britain.
The total frequency of “on time” and “on time” is 47 per million. When looking at the preferences of words related to individual time, summer (144 per million) is preferred over winter (63 per million). Sunday (114 per million) and Saturday (104 per million) are spoken and written more than other days. It occurs twice as frequently in the morning (206 per million) as in the evening (103 per million) and almost three times as frequently as in the afternoon (70 per million). The most popular month is December (149 per million), followed by March and May (145 and 142 per million, respectively).
2. Weather and climate
Cultural stereotypes and numerous surveys show that Brits often talk about the weather. Our language data supports this.
In addition to words such as “pub” and “restaurant” that occur with similar frequency, the word “weather” appears with a frequency of 60 per million. “Weather” is most often used in online language (mostly emails and text messages) followed by newspapers (weather reports).
Here’s an example from an entire casual text message exchange that illustrates a typical weather conversation:
When looking at specific weather terms, people mention sun (91 per million) more often than rain (51 per million as a noun and 15 per million as a verb). Storms (32 per million), clouds (39 per million), floods (19 per million) and even snow (37 per million) receive the attention they deserve in texts and speeches. Major storms are often referred to by their own names; for example, Desmond, which caused massive flooding in 2015.
Climate change (29 per million), emissions (43 per million) and renewable energy (6 per million) also now dominate the public agenda; This shows that there is an increasing focus not only on current weather conditions but also on long-term changes. There was a 21% increase in the combined relative frequencies of these terms between 2010-2015 and 2016-2020.
3. Food and beverage
This category reflects eating and drinking habits as well as nutritional preferences. “Dinner” appears 68 times per million words, “lunch” 51 times per million words, and “breakfast” 43 times per million words. The most frequently mentioned foods include eggs, fish, cake, apples, chocolate, cream, chicken, meat, fruit and cheese. A cultural passion for desserts is also evident: cake is talked about three times more often than salad.
The most commonly mentioned beverages are: tea, wine, coffee, beer, milk, juice and champagne. Tea, a British drink, is consumed almost six times more often than champagne.
The chart below shows which words are significantly associated with the verb “eat.” We measured these to show how strongly words are linked in text and speech. The closer the word appears to the middle node, the stronger the association, and the size of the circle reflects the frequency with which these words appear together in texts and speech.
4. Emotions
Keep Calm and carry on? Although the English temperament is known to be calm and somewhat reserved, data shows that the most common adjectives expressing an emotion are “happy”. It occurs 208 times per million and is often used in expressions of satisfaction, such as “I’m quite happy to stay at home.”
In contrast, the most frequently used adjective expressing a negative emotion is “sorry” (204 per million) and is often used in situations of apologizing or politely declining. Other adjectives expressing emotions include proud, sad (both 54 per million), pleased (53 per million), scared (47 per million), and pleased (46 per million).
5. Our body
The British National Corpus 2014 review also shows that people spend a fair amount of time talking about their bodies. Especially hand, head, eye, foot and heart are the first five most frequently used words about our body.
Many uses of words in this category are part of metaphors or fixed expressions. About a third of the uses of the term “head” are figurative or have another meaning, such as the job title: “chief marketing officer.” Expressions such as “on the one hand,” “in the public eye,” “to step on,” and “to break someone’s heart” are examples of how our everyday experience of the bodily world is present in everyday language. day.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Vaclav Brezina receives funding from the British Council’s ESRC.