Usage Fluctuation Analysis

Abstract This article introduces a methodology for the diachronic analysis of large historical corpora, Usage Fluctuation Analysis (UFA). UFA looks at fluctuation usage word as observed through collocation. It presupposes neither commitment to specific semantic theory, nor that results will focus solely on semantics. We focus, rather, upon word’s usage. considers amounts evidence about usage, time, made available by displaying in form graph. The paper provides guidelines interpretation graphs and three short case studies applying technique (i) its (ii) two words related social actors, whore harlot . These relate prior, labour intensive, corpus analyses. They also highlight novel observations affords.