Title |
Positivity of the English Language
|
---|---|
Published in |
PLOS ONE, January 2012
|
DOI | 10.1371/journal.pone.0029484 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Isabel M. Kloumann, Christopher M. Danforth, Kameron Decker Harris, Catherine A. Bliss, Peter Sheridan Dodds |
Abstract |
Over the last million years, human language has emerged and evolved as a fundamental instrument of social communication and semiotic representation. People use language in part to convey emotional information, leading to the central and contingent questions: (1) What is the emotional spectrum of natural language? and (2) Are natural languages neutrally, positively, or negatively biased? Here, we report that the human-perceived positivity of over 10,000 of the most frequently used English words exhibits a clear positive bias. More deeply, we characterize and quantify distributions of word positivity for four large and distinct corpora, demonstrating that their form is broadly invariant with respect to frequency of word use. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United States | 24 | 30% |
United Kingdom | 6 | 7% |
Japan | 4 | 5% |
France | 3 | 4% |
Canada | 2 | 2% |
Germany | 2 | 2% |
Spain | 2 | 2% |
Costa Rica | 2 | 2% |
Belgium | 2 | 2% |
Other | 8 | 10% |
Unknown | 26 | 32% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 59 | 73% |
Scientists | 14 | 17% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 4 | 5% |
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 2 | 2% |
Unknown | 2 | 2% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Nigeria | 3 | 2% |
United States | 3 | 2% |
France | 2 | 1% |
Germany | 2 | 1% |
China | 2 | 1% |
Indonesia | 1 | <1% |
Australia | 1 | <1% |
India | 1 | <1% |
United Kingdom | 1 | <1% |
Other | 6 | 4% |
Unknown | 148 | 87% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 39 | 23% |
Student > Bachelor | 28 | 16% |
Student > Master | 25 | 15% |
Researcher | 18 | 11% |
Professor | 12 | 7% |
Other | 26 | 15% |
Unknown | 22 | 13% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Social Sciences | 23 | 14% |
Linguistics | 20 | 12% |
Computer Science | 20 | 12% |
Psychology | 19 | 11% |
Arts and Humanities | 15 | 9% |
Other | 48 | 28% |
Unknown | 25 | 15% |