{"id":295,"date":"2011-12-14T21:07:30","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T05:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/?p=295"},"modified":"2011-12-14T21:07:30","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T05:07:30","slug":"i-heart-google-ngram-viewer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/entry\/295","title":{"rendered":"I Heart Google Ngram Viewer."},"content":{"rendered":"

I just discovered Google books Ngram Viewer<\/a>, which lets users find out historical changes in usage frequencies of particular words or phrases in its vast catalogue of scanned books. It’s not perfect, but a very good tool to analyze how our vocabularies have changed over time. Just as an example, here’s the comparison<\/a> of terms “transgender,” “transsexual,” and “transvestite” (click for larger graph).<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, both “transsexual” and “transvestite” were used commonly in the literature until the 1990s, when “transgender” started to become more popular. Just to give you the perspective: Kate Bornstein’s “Gender Outlaw” was published in 1994; Leslie Feinberg’s “Transgender Warriors” came out in 1996.<\/p>\n

In my zine, “War on Terror & War on Trafficking<\/a>,” I pointed out that the term “human trafficking” came into popular usage since around 2000. The chart below, which compares frequencies<\/a> of “human trafficking,” “involuntary migration,” and “forced prostitution” confirms this.<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s another interesting graph, comparing the usages<\/a> of “homosexual,” “heterosexual,” “bisexual,” and “queer.”<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a><\/p>\n

You can see that the word “queer” was commonly used before the 1970s, but probably for different meaning: in the 1970s and 1980s when the word was increasingly recognized as a slur against LGBT+ people, its usage dropped. However in the 1990s the word “queer” makes a comeback as a self-identified label for LGBT+ people, surpassing clinically-sounding “homosexual.”<\/p>\n

Chart below shows how current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s middle name was dropped<\/a> from popular usage after she went from the First Lady to a politician on her own light. I know that during the 2008 primary election pollsters were showing different polling results depending on whether or not “Rodham” was mentioned, so it makes sense that she strategically dropped the middle name and became Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, here’s a fun comparison between “womyn,” “womon,” and “wimmin” as to which one is the most popular alternative spelling<\/a> of “women”:<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/a><\/p>\n

Isn’t this fun?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just discovered Google books Ngram Viewer, which lets users find out historical changes in usage frequencies of particular words or phrases in its vast catalogue of scanned books. It’s not perfect, but a very good tool to analyze how our vocabularies have changed over time. Just as an example, here’s the comparison of terms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,13,6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}