The expansion of isms, 1820–1917: Data-driven analysis of political language in digitized newspaper collections

Words with the suffix-ism are reductionist terms that help us navigate complex social issues by using a simple one-word label for them. On the one hand they are often associated with political ideologies, but on the other they are present in many other domains of language, especially culture, scienc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of data mining and digital humanities Vol. HistoInformatics
Main Authors: Marjanen, Jani, Kurunmäki, Jussi, Pivovarova, Lidia, Zosa, Elaine
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: INRIA 18.12.2020
Nicolas Turenne
Subjects:
[info.info-cl]computer science [cs]/computation and language [cs.cl]
[shs.hist]humanities and social sciences/history
affinity propagation clustering
Computation and Language
Computer Science
diachronic word embeddings
History
Humanities and Social Sciences
ideology
isms
political language
ideology
isms
affinity propagation clustering
diachronic word embeddings
political language
ISSN:2416-5999, 2416-5999
Online Access:Get full text
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Description
Summary:Words with the suffix-ism are reductionist terms that help us navigate complex social issues by using a simple one-word label for them. On the one hand they are often associated with political ideologies, but on the other they are present in many other domains of language, especially culture, science, and religion. This has not always been the case. This paper studies isms in a historical record of digitized newspapers from 1820 to 1917 published in Finland to find out how the language of isms developed historically. We use diachronic word embeddings and affinity propagation clustering to trace how new isms entered the lexicon and how they relate to one another over time. We are able to show how they became more common and entered more and more domains. Still, the uses of isms as traditions for political action and thinking stand out in our analysis.
ISSN:2416-5999
2416-5999
DOI:10.46298/jdmdh.6159