ngrams and word choice

[Watcher55]

I know more than a few us read Nathan's blog today and played with the nifty ngram tool, but the spirited exchange that went on in the comment section has me wondering.

I thought it would be a good idea to kick it around for a while and share ideas on how, if and why we might use it. ms Word corrected my grammar for using "mankind" instead of "humanity" so I compared them. http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?cont ... moothing=3.

I thought it was interesting how they ran neck and neck for most of the 20th Century then "humanity" jumped ahead starting around 1980 (that's about the time Political Correctness made the scene). Does anyone else see the potential for linking the evolution of language (or at least word choice) and social evolution? I was already aware of the relationship; I just thought it was interesting that now a semi-reliable time frame can be established.

Is the ngram tool a good thing?
Is it, or does it have the potential of becoming, a reliable tool?
How and why might you use it?

[polymath]

Politically correct according to Webster's originated in 1936, according to Wikipedia in the early Eighteenth century. Sure, by the '80s, politically correct had also become a perjorative term, used by right wing ideologues to declaim socially consciousness decorum, though after co-option by Feminist movements and other equal rights movements mid Twentieth century and other New Left wing ideologies for mannerisms of social consciousness.

In a general sense, encompassing the many disparate uses of the term invokes some valence of socially conscious thinking. The early usage of the term was in the literal sense, what is correct thinking politically, someone's assumption that a particular politically patriotic viewpoint is the only correct one. Civil rights movements of the early Nineteenth century promulgated socially conscious thinking. Advances in socially conscious thinking progressed and the term took on new meaning, to the point it has opposing connotative valences. One movement considers it a negative term, another uses it in its positive senses, another makes light of it as a term that's lost all meaning, and so on across a spectrum of potentiality.

Word choice, part of diction, and linguistics and semiotics signals a person's beliefs, ideals, mores, and values. How mankind signals a difference from humankind, humanity, womankind, and homo sapien goes more to inform signal receiver, signified, than signal transmitter, signifier.

The term in stylistic terms I know least freighted by socially conscious overburden is decorum, meaning literary and dramatic propriety, from Latin, decorus (us masculine suffix, um neuter suffix), a neuter in person, gender, station, and status term. Decorum is a literary rhetorical property related to audience targetting.

Decorum from the Silva Rhetoricae, source Aristotle's Rhetoric

A central rhetorical principle requiring one's words and subject matter be aptly fit to each other, to the circumstances and occasion (kairos), the audience, and the speaker.

Though initially just one of several virtues of style ("aptum"), decorum has become a governing concept for all of rhetoric. Essentially, if one's ideas are appropriately embodied and presented (thereby observing decorum), then one's speech will be effective. Conversely, rhetorical vices are breaches of some sort of decorum.

Decorum invokes a range of social, linguistic, aesthetic, and ethical proprieties for both the creators and critics of speech or writing. Each of these must be balanced against each other strategically in order to be successful in understanding or creating discourse.

Besides being an overarching principle of moderation and aptness, decorum has been a controlling principle in correlating certain rhetorical genres or strategies to certain circumstances. Aristotle describes each of the branches of oratory as being appropriate to judicial, legislative, or epideictic occasions and to specific time periods (past, future, and present, respectively). The concept of stasis included a procedure for discovering and developing arguments appropriate to given circumstances. Cicero followed the principle of decorum in assigning an appropriate level of style to distinct rhetorical purposes. Throughout rhetoric, decorum structures the pedagogy and procedures of this discipline as much as it governs the overall uses of language.

http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Encompassing%20 ... ecorum.htm

[steve]

Is the ngram tool a good thing?

No.

It's fine for a few laughs, but any scholarship that comes from this will be junk.

Considering the beatdown literary criticism has taken in recent decades by the many and varied "schools of thought" (which are actually "penitentiaries of ignorance") it's a safe bet that this new way of looking at literature is unnecessary and harmful.

People unable to express why a book is good or bad rely on parlor tricks like this. I'm certain PhDs in Literature will be awarded to people who employ the ngram; those people should be avoided and scorned.

[Watcher55]

Is the ngram tool a good thing?

No.

It's fine for a few laughs, but any scholarship that comes from this will be junk.

Considering the beatdown literary criticism has taken in recent decades by the many and varied "schools of thought" (which are actually "penitentiaries of ignorance") it's a safe bet that this new way of looking at literature is unnecessary and harmful.

People unable to express why a book is good or bad rely on parlor tricks like this. I'm certain PhDs in Literature will be awarded to people who employ the ngram; those people should be avoided and scorned.

Yeah, I recently divorced myself from “schools of…(SOT) and politics and social engineering and all that rot (I might still have a couple pale spots where the blinders were but nuthin’ a little sun won’t hep). If I’m reading you correctly, I have to agree that too many perfectly valid principles are being abandoned in the course/name of social-evolution/progress.

I wonder if all these complicated shortcuts we’re inventing are akin to chopping down the tree so everyone can reach the fruit.