Monthly Archives: July 2011
The Economist, “Word herd”
Financial journalists’ writing becomes more homogenous as markets rise WORD frequency follows a mathematical relationship known as a power law. Some words, like “man”, are very common. Some, like “recidivism”, make up a very long tail of words that are … Continue reading
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The Economist/Johnson, “Anti-Americanisms”
Since the Beeb’s readers had so little trouble spouting dozens and dozens of "Americanisms" they dislike (the BBC closed comments after 1,295 had arrived), and since such a high proportion seem to be false Americanisms, I propose that this is … Continue reading
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The Economist/Johnson, “News you can (almost) use”
WORD-frequency follows a power-law distribution. Some words (like "man") are very common in English text. Some (like "recidivism") are fairly rare. Two researchers, Aaron Gerow (of Trinity College Dublin) and Mark Keane (of University College Dublin) have found that changes … Continue reading
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New Books Podcast on You Are What You Speak
I had a nice long interview with Cat Davies, of Kent and Cambridge Universities, on the ideas in You Are What You Speak, and what made me want to write the book. The interview is part of the the New … Continue reading
