Hispanics are more likely to use positive language rather than sad or cynical according .
For the ten languages studied, the researchers noted a general preference for a "linguistic delight" that Hispanics are the champions.
Scientists have turned to the Laboratory of the history of computing from the American University in order to process a massive amount of words from novels, Twitter stream, television, song lyrics, newspaper New York Times and the movie subtitles of the ten most spoken languages in the world.
The languages studied are English, Spanish, French, German, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Indonesian and Egyptian Arabic.
The 10 000 most used words in each language were identified using algorithms. Then the positive connotation of words was recorded by native speakers on a scale from 1 to 9. In French, for example, the word is the lowest rated "Hitler" (1.38), preceded by "suicide" (1.40), "death" (1.44) "dead" and "cancer" (1.48). Conversely, the word best noted in French is "happiness" (8.38) followed by "happy" and "love" (8:34) and "love" (8.30).
In English, the lower rated words "terrorist" and "suicide" (1.30) preceded by "rape" (1.44). Top rated are "laughter" (8.50), followed by "happiness" (8:44), and "love" (8.45).
Hispanics have simply wrong note death in general by placing the "death" (1.54), a combination of die (1.62) "killing" (1.64) and "kill" (1.66 ) at the bottom of the list. More generous top table, they attribute to 8.68 "Love", followed by "happiness" in the singular (8.60) and plural (8.48) and "peace" (8.42). Francophone give only 8.06 to peace and Anglophones even less with a score of 7.86.
Humans are fundamentally optimistic
The study lends support to the "Pollyanna hypothesis" incorporated in 1969 by two psychologists from the University of Illinois that men tend to use positive words than negative. "Put simply, they wrote, men tend to see (and talk about) on the bright side." This principle has also given rise to what became known through Pollyanna, that is, the tendency of respondents to remember more easily the positive elements of a list that negative. This bias is corrected by the mass effect: in fact, the calculation of average scores was made from 5 million notes!
From a global point of view, an exploration of words on the web showed that Spanish was the most positive language. China is positioned at the other end of the spectrum as the least optimistic language; in this case, the main source of words was literature.
The most interesting fact still remains that, in any language, despite the flood of dramatic statements and comments brought about these events, men use more words than happy sad words.
This study is available in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition, on the website of the University of Vermont.
Sarkozy (3.82) is at the same level as the word 'old' and ranks behind Chirac (4.96) and the Netherlands (4.86), which, with this note, no better than the word 'review' in the heart of francophones. DSK (3.50) is dead last in our selection of French politicians.
Mom (7.70) scores better than Papa (7.38).
The word 'freedom' is placed as high as "Mom" (7.70) and the family is not the source of trouble that we want to believe (7.58).
The simple pleasures of French: the holidays (8.16), chocolates and weekends (7.64), Christmas (7.60), increased (6.54).
Cats (6.80) are rated as dogs (5.88).
France (6.54) is placed before Quebec (6.44) and Belgium (6.06). Syria war is relegated to the bottom of the table (3.60).
Taxes (2.98) and Fukushima (2.58) are not great impression.
The school (6.02) and the Republic (5.88) defend about their rank but fail to beat the Simpsons (6.54).
Main picture:
Holland / review 4.86
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