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The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books

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  • Alberto Acerbi
  • Vasileios Lampos
  • Philip Garnett
  • R Alexander Bentley

Abstract

We report here trends in the usage of “mood” words, that is, words carrying emotional content, in 20th century English language books, using the data set provided by Google that includes word frequencies in roughly 4% of all books published up to the year 2008. We find evidence for distinct historical periods of positive and negative moods, underlain by a general decrease in the use of emotion-related words through time. Finally, we show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more “emotional” than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language.

Suggested Citation

  • Alberto Acerbi & Vasileios Lampos & Philip Garnett & R Alexander Bentley, 2013. "The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-6, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0059030
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059030
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