When did people first start writing about 'spa', or rather mentioning the word in books? Possibly in 16th century England when the Roman passion for bathing in natural waters was revived, Wikipedia) How do the English, French and German usages compare?
What can be learned from the history of American interest in 'hot springs', 'mineral waters', and 'spa', at least in terms of the mention of these in published books? Can we see how 'spa' has gained in popularity and diverged from its original focus on healing waters?
Is there a difference between the British and Americans regards the written emphasis on 'healing' and 'medicine' from the 18th century to the present?
When did the terms 'alternative medicine' and 'wellness' enter the published vocabulary in English (mid-20th century), and with what comparative level of usage?
How do the British, Americans, French and German differ in their interest in the four elements - Water, Fire, Air, Earth - in terms of the frequency with which they write about these in general? Does that tell us anything useful?
These are just a few questions that came up for me when I spent an evening playing with a new online tool. Below are some of the results, but please note that any interpretation of the results can only be superficial without further careful investigation.
Analysing culture through the written word
In December 2010 the results of a project begun in early 2007 were published in Science Magazine's special issue Insights of the Decade. It included an article about a new style of digital research the developers call 'culturomics' - Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books .
Using the Google Books database (an ambitious and controversial project to scan every page of every book ever published), the researchers constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. They suggested it could be used to investigate cultural trends quantitatively.
The database has been made available online. You enter words or phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, and it displays a graph showing how they have occurred in books published in seven languages (5 categories for English) over the selected years.
As with any source of evidence about the human past, the challenge with culturomic trajectories lies in the interpretation. The charts I've created below are for interest only and no definitive conclusions can or should be drawn. But they are interesting to muse on, as I did in my earlier questions.
I tried various versions in the different languages and for different time spans. I've included here the ones that seemed most interesting based on only a brief exploration. Apologies for the small reproduction size.
Notes
The current version at www.culturomics.org is considered limited in terms of data and analytical tools but the creators hope to expand it in order to be able to study semantic shifts over history more effectively. At present, some consider it too crude to be really useful. Take note.
The category 'Google Million' includes books in English ranging from 1500 to 2008. No more than about 6000 books were chosen from any one year, which means that all of the scanned books from early years are present, and books from later years are randomly sampled.
Publishing was a relatively rare event in the 16th and 17th centuries. So if a phrase occurs in one book in one year but not in the preceding or following years, that creates a taller spike than it would in later years. You'll see some examples of that in the charts below.
More about how the Google Ngram Viewer works.
On the site itself, below each chart are very useful links that allow you to search in Google Books for the different year spans. For example, here's a list of books that mention 'spa' for the period 1700 to 1815 in English.
Some sample charts for spa culturomics
The use of 'spa', 1700-2008
When did people first start writing about 'spa' (blue), or rather mentioning the word in books? How do the English, French and German usages compare?
English One Million (see note above for explanation)
French
German
The use of 'hot spring', 'mineral water', and 'spa'
in American English, 1750-2000
What can be learned from the history of American interest in 'hot springs' (blue), 'mineral water' (red), and 'spa' (green), at least in terms of the mention of these in published books? Can we see how 'spa' has gained in popularity and diverged from its original focus on healing waters?
Comparing the use of 'healing' and 'medicine'
in American English and British English, 1750-2000
Is there a difference between the British and Americans regards the written emphasis on 'healing' (blue) and 'medicine' (red) from the 18th century to the present?
American English
British English
The addition of 'wellness' and 'alternative medicine'
in English, 1950-2008
When did the terms 'alternative medicine' (yellow) and 'wellness' (green) enter the published vocabulary in English (mid-20th century), and with what comparative level of usage?
The four elements: water, fire, earth, air, 1700-2000
How do the British, Americans, French and German differ in their interest in the four elements - Water (blue), Fire (red), Air (yellow), Earth (green) - in terms of the frequency with which they write about these in general? Does that tell us anything useful?
American English
British
French
German
Try it yourself: Google Books Ngram Viewer
Let me know what you think or find, and comment below ...
If you share my charts, please acknowledge this source article.
