This paper investigates how word usage changes throughout a book as a function of cumulative word-time, defined as the number of words encountered. Using ousiometrics (a reinterpretation of the valence-arousal-dominance framework), the authors convert text into time series of power and danger scores. Empirical mode decomposition is used to analyze these time series, revealing that shorter books show a general trend, while longer books exhibit additional fluctuations with periods of a few thousand words, regardless of overall book length. This suggests longer books structurally resemble concatenations of shorter texts, aligning with editorial practices like chapter divisions. The methodology provides a data-driven denoising approach suitable for texts of varying lengths.
Publisher
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Published On
Apr 29, 2023
Authors
Mikaela Irene Fudolig, Thayer Alshaabi, Kathryn Cramer, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds
Tags
word usage
cumulative word-time
ousiometrics
empirical mode decomposition
text analysis
shorter books
longer books
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