How Public Media in the US and UK Compare in Their Terminology For the Humanities


Alan Liu, August 3, 2015

DOI: 10.5072/FK2FN18G5G

While assembling a study corpus of public discourse in English about the humanities (since about 1990 when newspapers began fully digitizing articles), the 4Humanities "WhatEvery1Says" Project (WE1S) encountered the following questions of linguistic usage:

 

  • How are the humanities referred to in newspapers, magazines, and other media in the U.S. compared to the U.K. (and other Commonwealth nations)? Especially, what from a comparative perspective is the overlap/difference between the terms "humanities," "liberal arts," "arts," and "the arts"?

  • Do the proportions of such terms change over time in each nation?
  • Most practically, which terms ("humanities," "liberal arts," "arts," and "the arts") should the WE1S project use for searches in newspaper API's and other resources as it locates texts for its corpus? (Since public discourse in newspapers, magazines, and other media is too ample to be collected in toto, WE1S aims to collect just what might be called the "neighborhood" of discussion of the humanities. The project will then apply text analysis methodology to this neighborhood to refine its understanding of the way the humanities are discussed.)

 

The following is a preliminary study focused on comparing linguistic usage in the U.S. and U.K.  It is conducted by Alan Liu with assistance from other members of the WE1S research team and the co-leaders of 4Humanities.org. The study will be extended and revised as WE1S research continues. (For a PDF version of this document, click on the "Printable version" link at the bottom of this page.)

 

 

 

 

# Articles in The Guardian mentioning "humanities"  # Articles in The Guardian mentioning "arts" # Articles in The Guardian mentioning "the arts"

 

Guardian 1999 -- "the arts" -- most frequent words Guardian 1999 articles mentioning "the arts"
-- most frequent words

 

Guardian 1999 -- "the arts" -- bigrams

Guardian 1999 mentioning "the arts"
-- bigrams

Guardian 1999 -- "the arts" -- concordance

Guardian 1999 mentioning "the arts"
-- concordance

Guardian 2014 -- "the arts" -- most frequent words Guardian 2014 mentioning "the arts"
-- most frequent words

Guardian 2014 -- "the arts" -- bigrams Guardian 2014 mentioning "the arts"
-- bigrams

Guardian 2000 -- "the arts" -- concordance Guardian 2014 mentioning "the arts"
-- concordance

 

 

 

"humanities":

BNC - "humanities" in magazines BNC - "humanities" usage in magazines
(too few newspapers to include)

 
 

BNC - "humanities" - collocates BNC - "humanities" - collocates

"arts":

BNC - "arts" - in magazines BNC - "arts" - in magazines

 

BNC - "arts" in newspapers BNC - "arts" in newspapers

BNC - "arts" - collocates BNC - "arts" - collocates

"the arts":

BNC - "the arts" - in magazines BNC - "the arts" - in magazines

BNC - "the arts" - in newspapers BNC - "the arts" - in newspapers

BNC - "the arts" - collocates BNC - "the arts" - collocates

 

 

Hansard Corpus - "humanities" Hansard Corpus - "humanities"

Hansard Corpus - "arts" Hansard Corpus - "arts"

 

 

Google Books - British - "humanities" Google Books - British - "humanities"

Google Books - British - "arts" Google Books - British - "arts"

Google Books - British - "the arts" Google Books - British - "the arts"

 

 

Strathy Corpus (Canada) - "humanities" - in magazines

Strathy Corpus (Canada) - "humanities" - in magazines

Strathy Corpus (Canada) - "arts" - in magazines Strathy Corpus (Canada) - "arts" - in magazines

Strathy Corpus (Canada) - "the arts" - in magazines Strathy Corpus (Canada) - "the arts" - in magazines

 

 

Corpus of Historical American English - "humanities" Corpus of Historical American English - "humanities"

 

 


Additional Question: For Symmetry with Adding "The Arts" to Searches in U.K. Sources, Should WE1S Also Search on "The Arts" in U.S. newspapers and magazines (as well as "humanities" and "liberal arts")?