Problem Statement

Words are introduced into the English language at an extremely rapid pace. As new words begin to be used, their meaning is often ambiguous and undefined. New words then become more integrated into our society, and their meanings begin oxymorphically both solidify and morph. A word’s full history, including when, and in what context, it was introduced, how its meaning has evolved over time, and in what contexts it is currently being used, provides a unique view of English language. Further, it provides context for a given word.

Approach

  1. Choose an interesting English word with a divergent history
  2. Identify which corpuses to parse for word instances/occurences
  3. Design a visualization to demonstrate the word’s evolution

Audience

This project appeals to the general public, and could also be used by researchers and scholars. Linguists in particular might be very interested in the project. The analysis would reveal how events impact a word’s use, popularity and connotation, providing both research and general interest insights.

Skills Needed

Text parsing is cruical for the success of this problem, especially a powerful process that can ingest a large amount of text. Also, the project requires front-end skills (HTML, CSS, JS, and any other data visualization tools)