Diachronic changes of number use in written American English from 1923 to 2008

Abstract: This study examines diachronic changes in number use in written American English from 1923 to 2008 in TIME magazine, analyzing a 170-million-token corpus. We investigate the effects of magnitudes, roundness, and representational formats on number frequency, along with the evolution of culturally salient numbers reflecting societal shifts. Utilizing Bayesian negative binomial regression for in-depth corpus analysis, our findings demonstrate a consistent influence of magnitudes and roundness, with smaller magnitudes and rounder numbers appearing more frequently. We observe a significant standardization in portraying large numbers, marked by a shift from numerical to mixed forms (e.g., “6,000,000,000” to “6 billion”) around 1940s. This reflects changes in both formal writing conventions and editorial practices of numerical representation. Our research further identifies distinct culturally significant numbers for each decade, linked to social, economic, and technological trends, underscoring the role of numerical analysis in media to decode complex cultural and societal patterns. This study contributes significantly to understanding the dynamic interplay between language, culture, and media in the context of numerical representations.

摘要：本研究通过深入分析一个包含1.7亿词汇的语料库，详细考察了1923年至2008年期间，美国《时代》杂志中数字使用的历史变化。该研究探讨了维度、近似性以及表征形式对数字使用的影响。同时，本研究还深入探讨了能够体现社会变迁的文化凸显数字的使用演变。通过采用贝叶斯负二项回归模型进行细致的语料库分析，研究发现，在所有年代中，维度和近似性对数字使用频率的影响呈现出高度一致性。具体而言，人们更倾向于使用更小、具有更多近似属性的数字。这一现象可能与人类的普遍认知密切相关：相比于大数字，小数字更容易被处理；而近似数字由于具有更广泛的语义范围，因此被更频繁地使用。此外，研究还发现，自20世纪40年代起，表示大数字的方式从纯数字形式（如“60,000,000,000”）逐渐转变为混合形式（如“60亿”）。这一变化反映了书写规范和编辑实践的演变。研究还特别关注了各个年代中具有文化凸显意义的数字，并发现这些数字往往与社会、经济和技术的发展趋势紧密相连。这一发现进一步强调了数字研究在解码复杂文化和社会变迁中的重要作用。综上所述，本研究对理解人类认知、语言、文化和社会在数字表征背景下的动态互动做出了重要贡献。

Contribution: Gui Wang: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Supervision, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Jing Shu: Software, Methodology, Data curation. Li Wang: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Supervision, Conceptualization.

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Recommended citation: Wang, G., Shu, J., & Wang, L. (2024). Diachronic changes of number use in written American English from 1923 to 2008. Language Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2024.101656