Survey shows shift in language around mental health over 79 years
Jun 2024, phys.org
340,000 texts taken from Google Books, and a combination of the Corpus of Historical American English, and the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and spanning 79 years from 1940–2019, using a list of generic terms for mental ill health. It's important to note that the authors here have specifically looked at numerical frequency of word usage in written culture, rather than community word preferences over time.
- Generic terms for mental ill health appeared more than twice as often in 2019 as in 1940
- Phrases which included "disease," and "disturbance" grew less common over time
- Phrases that included words like "mental health," "psychiatric," and "illness" were used more commonly
- In particular, "mental illness," after a spike in popularity between the 1940s and 1960s, reigned as the most-used term.
via University of Melbourne: Haslam N, Baes N. What should we call mental ill health? Historical shifts in the popularity of generic terms. PLOS Mental Health (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmen.0000032
Image credit: AI Art - Tree of Life in Art Nouveau No Symmetry - 2025
Study finds politicians use simpler language on hot days
Jun 2024, phys.org
They used seven million parliamentary speeches representing more than 28,000 politicians in eight different countries over several decades combined with global meteorological data.Hot days reduce language complexity but cold days did not have the same effect.They looked closer using a subset in Germany: The larger effect size observed in older politicians could be because older individuals are more susceptible to extreme temperatures.
via Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock: The effect of temperature on language complexity: Evidence from seven million parliamentary speeches, iScience (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.110106
Texting abbreviations makes senders seem insincere, study finds
Nov 2024, phys.org
u wot mate??
via Stanford: David Fang et al. Shortcuts to Insincerity: Texting Abbreviations Seem Insincere and Not Worth Answering, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (2024). DOI: 10.1037/xge0001684.
Northerners, Scots and Irish excel at detecting fake accents to guard against outsiders, study suggests
Nov 2024, phys.org
Just this thought, never considered this -
"Cultural, political, or even violent conflict are likely to encourage people to strengthen their accents as they try to maintain social cohesion through cultural homogeneity. Even relatively mild tension, for example the intrusion of tourists in the summer, could have this effect."
via University of Cambridge: Evidence that cultural groups differ in their abilities to detect fake accents, Evolutionary Human Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2024.36
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