Emotions are fleeting. But when they’re captured in language, we can study how they spread from person to person, and even through time.
What impact does the emotional language of others have on you? And how many emotions are there anyway?
Linguist Daniel Midgley lets it all out on this episode of Talk the Talk.
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Show notes
Has the Voynich Manuscript been cracked? No, but another interesting teaser.
http://boingboing.net/2014/02/21/voynich-manuscript-partially-d.html
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/176970-voynich-manuscript-most-mysterious-text-in-world-may-have-been-cracked
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/news/has-the-most-mysterious-manuscript-in-the-world-finally-been-cracked-16532856
Sentiment analysis is an important subarea in computational linguistics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis
When people post Facebook messages in rainy times, their posts have more negative emotion words — and so do those of their friends later.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-03/uoc–caf031114.php
Corvillo, et al.: Detecting Emotional Contagion in Massive Social Networks
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0090315
Also: Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0069841
Hard times means a decade of miserable literature.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109004155.htm
How do you spot emotions in text anyway? You could try Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC).
http://www.liwc.net/
One rather clunky but successful approach involves hand-built lists of positive and negative words.
http://www.slideshare.net/stevenkellyactor/positive-emotions-list
http://www.slideshare.net/stevenkellyactor/negative-emotions
Paul Ekman did research in PNG and found emotions were the same as for Americans (PDF)
https://www.uni-muenster.de/imperia/md/content/psyifp/aeechterhoff/wintersemester2011-12/vorlesungkommperskonflikt/ekman_friesen_constantsemofacialexpr_jpsp1971.pdf
More about his work
http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/ekmans-six-basic-emotions-list-definitions-quiz.html
Can you pick the emotions in this simple test?
http://www.cio.com/article/facial-expressions-test
People recognise four emotions rather than six.
http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_306019_en.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-02/uog-wao020314.php
And, contra Ekman, these expressions do not appear to be universal.
http://www.northeastern.edu/news/2014/03/barrett-gendron/
The OED has added a bracket of new words
http://time.com/23817/oxford-english-dictionary-adds-bestie-crap-shoot-bathroom-break/
Including four versions of cunt
http://jezebel.com/cunty-cuntish-cunted-and-cunting-added-to-oxford-engl-1543768870
Here’s the full list
http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/march-2014-update/new-words-list-march-2014/
Hondle?
http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/hondle
