Saturday, January 31, 2015

Top 20 Words of President Monson

As a follow-up to last week's blog on the Top 20 Words of President Benson, this week's post will be the "Top 20 Words of President Monson." Using similar methods to last time, I created a histogram of the top 20 words used by President Thomas S. Monson with the 100 most common words in the English language (i.e. "Standard Lexicon") removed. The percent occurrence of each word is illustrated by the gray bars in the graph. In the same graph, I've plotted the percent occurrence that those same top 20 words occur when you subtract the percent occurrence of the average general authority (i.e. "General Conference Lexicon"). These are given in the light blue bars.


As might be expected, the words god, lord, church, Jesus, and Christ are in the top. However, compared to the average general authority conference talk, President Monson uses those words less frequently. To be clear, those are still in the top twenty for President Monson, they are just diluted by the many other words that he uses. For example, President Benson's top word was church, and it has ~0.55% occurrence. President Monson's top word of god occurs with just under 0.3% occurrence.

Why the discrepancy? My interpretation is that President Monson has a wider diversity of words than the average general authority, and thus his top-used words occur less frequently because they are diluted by his linguistic diversity. Comparing President Monson to President Benson, President Monson has ~15,000 unique words in all of his talks from 1971 to 2015, whereas President Benson has ~8,000 unique words in his set of talks. Hmm...perhaps a future post can consider word diversity among different general authorities.

Now let's look at what President Monson's top twenty words are compared to the average general authority. The graph below shows the top twenty words when the percent occurrence has the average % occurrence of all general authorities subtracted out. In other words, it's taking the blue bars from the graph above and reordering them. The next graph shows the same top twenty words, but compares the relative percent increase (i.e. President Monson's percent occurrence divided by the average percent occurrence, minus 100%)


Looking at these words, we can come up with some interesting comments about President Monson's topics and speaking style. For example, President Monson's top words compared to other general authorities in absolute percent occurrence is president and brother. I was a little puzzled by this at first. Does president refer to the president of the church, to President Monson, to the president of the United States? Does brother refer to the brotherhood of man, his own brother, Brother so-and-so, or what? After looking at a few examples of both word usages, I came to the conclusion that president and brother are largely used as the name-titles President and Brother. 

As an example, you can look at the word tree below from the talks of President Monson from 2011 to 2014:


Most of the instances using the word president refer to President Somebody. The same pattern occurs with brother. [Follow this link and you should be able to create your own word tree from President Monson's 2011-2014 talks].

Anyone familiar with President Monson's style of speaking knows that storytelling is an integral part of his talks. Thus the use of the name-titles President and Brother are consistent with stories of individuals. Similarly, in President Monson's top 20 list, the words each, years, ago, (think "years ago..."), city, where, ever, came seem particularly applicable to recalling specific accounts and happenings. The occurrence of the word Monson even fits into this category because he of necessity refers to his own actions or conversations with others--usually referring to himself as "Brother Monson."

Other themes that I draw from the top twenty words are:

I was confused by the words proposed and manifest, though. Why would proposed be used 350% more often than the average general authority, and manifest 200% more? Then I looked at the examples and found that over the course of President Monson's service as a counselor in the First Presidency, he has said "It is proposed that we sustain..." and "All in favor, please manifest..." many, many times!

In addition to looking at words that were used most frequently, I found it interesting to look at words that were used infrequently. For example, the word repent has only been used 4 times by President Monson in general conference from 1971 to 2015. Although he clearly teaches people to repent, improve, and change their lives, apparently you are not likely to hear President Monson directly proclaim "Repent!" Instead, he'll say something like:
May we return to our homes with a resolve in our hearts to be a little better than we have been in the past. May we be a little kinder and more thoughtful. May we reach out in helpfulness, not only to our fellow members but also to those who are not of our faith. As we associate with them, may we show our respect for them. (Closing talk of 2014 October General Conference)
I also found it interesting to find words that President Monson used only once, and that no other general authority used at conference from 1971 to 2015. To finish up, here is a list of a few of the many words that you can only find once in the conference archives--and that once is by President Monson. See if you can find them (exact word forms only!):
  • ascertained
  • auctioned
  • avocados
  • bachelor
  • Beatles
  • billboard
  • blogging
  • bobbed
  • caboose
  • canine
  • clown
  • dentistry
  • humanities
  • periscope
  • snuck
  • sombrero
  • Tylenol
  • ukuleles
  • vaccines
  • vagrant
  • vendors
  • viewer
  • wastebasket
  • Wheaties



Sunday, January 25, 2015

Top 20 Words of Ezra Taft Benson

For this blog post, I wanted to do something related to Ezra Taft Benson, since we are studying out of the manual Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson for 2015. One visualization method I've been playing around with lately is an Excel-based word histogram tool. Basically, you add a text to an Excel document and then the tool counts up each word to see how many times it's used in a text.

Using some basic web scraping, I downloaded the texts for all LDS General Conference talks from 1971 to 2014. I then separated out the talks given by Ezra Taft Benson from 1971 to 1989. I then did a word histogram analysis on the 139,000 words used in those talks to see which words he used most frequently. And the result was...

the, of, and, to, in, a, that, is, we, you...

Hmmm...not very informative on President Benson (I'll refer to him as President Benson, even though I'm also including talks he gave as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve). It turns out that President Benson's  most commonly used words match up pretty well with the most commonly used words in the English language. For things to get a little more interesting, we have to take out the most common words in the English language. Below is a histogram showing the frequency of President Benson's top 20 words (out of ~139,000) when the hundred or so most common words in the English language (aka the "Standard Lexicon") are removed.




A little more interesting, huh? The top word used is church, followed by God, Lord, Christ, book, Mormon, Jesus, etc.

Are there insights into the themes of President Benson's talks from this graph? Perhaps. However, what if these top twenty words are just the standard words used by all general authorities in their general conference talks? In other words, how do we differentiate the words that President Benson used in particular versus the standard "General Conference Lexicon"?

To address that question, I did a histogram analysis of all conference talks from 1971 to 2015. That's about 3,400 talks and roughly 6.2 million words. As you might imagine, it took a good Sunday afternoon plus a few Excel crashes to get it all processed. The result is very interesting, though. It turns out that President Benson does use very similar words to other general authorities. However, by subtracting the percent frequency occurrence of the words in an average general authority talk from the words used by President Benson, you start to get some insightful results. Below is a graph showing the same list from above after subtracting the general conference frequency.



It turns out, that among President Benson's top 20 words, some are standouts, while others are not. For example, church, God, Lord, Christ, book, and Mormon are all used with a higher frequency than the average general authority, with book and Mormon standing out the most. And while Christ is used more frequently, Jesus is used slightly less frequently. President Benson clearly preferred the more formal name Christ over the more familiar name Jesus.

Looking at the remainder of the list is somewhat interesting, but things get more insightful if we re-sort the list to contain the top 20 words after subtracting the General Conference Lexicon. Here's a graph showing the re-sorted list:





Now we're getting to the gold! Both book and Mormon take the cake in % frequency as compared to other general authorities. The word book occurs 519 times and the word Mormon occurs 432 times in his talks. The combined phrase Book of Mormon appears 401 times in his texts, indicating that book and Mormon are really just a slightly inflated indicator of the frequency with which President Benson referred to the Book of Mormon. President Benson's reputation as an advocate for the Book of Mormon comes from his vehement endorsement in talks such as The Book of Mormon--Keystone of Our Religion or The Book of Mormon Is the Word of God. However, the histogram indicates that he consistently referred to the Book of Mormon throughout his ministry.

After book and Mormon, the words God, church, Lord appear at a higher frequency. Apparently President Benson made frequent mention of these already commonly used words. Looking for additional topics, there are words related to family life (home, family, fathers) and government (states, earth, constitution, land, government). With these topics combined, you can see President Benson's emphasis on "God, Family, Country." Other notable top 20 words include Joseph & Smith, mission, and pride. President Benson's talk Beware of Pride contributes more than half of his usage of the word pride, but it would still be on the "more frequent" list even without that seminal talk.

The graph above shows the absolute frequency of occurrence, but what about the relative frequency of occurrence? The graph below shows the ratio increase of the words above. In other words, not only did President Benson use the words book and Mormon 0.3% more on an absolute usage basis than the average general authority. However, those words are at a ratio of 4 times (400%) more. From this view, the word constitution stands out as being used 2000% or 20 times more frequently than the average general authority. Although constitution was not the most frequently used word by President Benson, the use by the average general authority is rare. The result being that President Benson uses it at a much higher ratio.



What word shows up when you re-sort the % increase list? Interestingly, it is the word communism. Apparently the word communism occurs in conference talks from 1971 to 2015 about 21 times, 17 of which are in talks by President Benson. In case you're wondering, the other 4 occurrences are by Dallin H Oaks, Loren C Dunn, Bruce R McConkie, and Harold B Lee, each with one mention of the word communism.

What are some of your favorite talks by Elder/President Benson? Any notable words you remember from those talks?