An Election Day Look at How Language Changes in The Times, and in the Culture

Here’s an Election Day diversion, courtesy of the research and development people at The Times. It’s called Chronicle and it measures the number of articles in which a particular word or phrase has appeared since 1981.

The brainchild of Alexis Lloyd, a creative technologist, Chronicle has a serious purpose.

“You can see how topics have risen and fallen over time, but you can also see the way language and terminology change over time,” she said. For example, she said, the term “greenhouse effect” has given way to the broader discussion of “climate change.”

She built a rudimentary version of the tool about six months ago and has been refining it ever since. Eventually, she intends to take its reach back to include more than another 100 years of Times usage.  It is intended for internal use, at least for now.

My use of the tool started with some brainstorming involving not only Ms. Lloyd, but also Matt Boggie, director of technology strategy, and my assistant, Joseph Burgess. Because this post is appearing on Election Day, we concentrated on phrases from the political realm — from “activist judges,” which peaked in late 2004, to jobs and economy, phrases that have been increasing and falling for years but are at an especially high level now for obvious reasons.

Readers who have interesting ideas for words or phrases to search or compare can e-mail me at [email protected]. (One particularly interesting one that is sometimes used as an example is the fall of “yuppies” and the rise of “hipsters.”) I’ll do a follow-up post soon to show the results of some of the best suggestions.

From “climate change” to “recount,” here are some of the results we came up with.  (One further Election Day note: I’ll be staying in The Times’s newsroom later and into the night and intend on being active on Twitter, where you can follow me at twitter.com/sulliview.   I’ll put the messages in Storify form on Wednesday and add them as a link to this blog.)

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Jobs vs. Economy: Rising and falling but at a higher level over time.

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Bailout: It increased and has remained in the conversation.

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Election: Predictable rises and falls.

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Climate Change: Almost unheard of until 1990.

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Activist Judges: We were talking about them most in 2004.

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Chads: The aftermath of the 2000 election made them a household word.

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Job Creation: A growing concern.

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Health Care: Usage reached its height a few years ago

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Death Tax: On everyone’s lips in 2000 and fading ever since

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Recount: Is another big increase on the way?