Illustration Shutterstock This finding comes from a thorough analysis of the language used in millions of books. The study, led by WUR professor Marten Scheffer, was published this week in the prominent American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scheffer applied the statistical technique of principal component analysis to the 5000 commonest words in millions of books published in English and Spanish between 1850 and 2019. The pattern that emerges is of a gradual increase in rational words up until about 1980. After that, the incidence of such words falls drastically.
1980
The reverse is true for emotional words, the use of which has increased a lot since 1980. It is well known that rational arguments and science lose out to emotional arguments and feelings with increasing frequency these days, says Scheffer. ‘What is new is that we show that that reversal had already started around 1980.’
Opinions are divided as to the reason for this change. Scheffer thinks it has to do with rampant neo-liberalism and increasing dissatisfaction with the distribution of wealth in the world. A feeling which was then fuelled by the rise of the social media.
There will be an extensive interview with Scheffer about this study in the next Resource on 13 January.
