Ngram data

I have been reading Putnam’s “The Upswing” which considers trends in American society between individualism and communitarianism. One interesting data source cited to show various trends is based on the frequency with which different words appear in the writing of authors of a certain period in history. Such data quantified as an Ngram can be explored using the massive collection of books digitized by Google.

Here is my effort to duplicate one of Putnam’s claims focused on the use of the pronouns I and We in literature with the Ngram Viewer. As you can see, there has been a great recent increase in the “I” pronoun consistent with Putnam’s I-WE-I model with a more communitarian view in the 1970s.

You can compare words reflecting all kinds of possible trends making this an interesting tool for classroom projects.