Work

Readability and Complexity:Diachronic Evolution of Literary Language Across 9000 Novels

Year: 2023

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Using a large corpus of English language novels from 1880 to 2000, we compare several textual features associated with literary quality, seeking to examine developments in literary language and narrative complexity through time. We show that while we find a correlation between the features, readability metrics are the only ones that exhibit a steady evolution, indicating that novels become easier to read through the 20th century but not simpler. We discuss the possibility of cultural selection as a factor and compare our findings with a subset of canonical works.

Authors: Bizzoni, Yuri; id_orcid 0000-0002-6981-7903, Feldkamp, Pascale; id_orcid 0000-0002-2434-4268, Lassen, Ida Marie S.; id_orcid 0000-0001-6905-5665, Rosendahl Thomsen, Mads; id_orcid 0000-0002-4975-6752, Nielbo, Kristoffer; id_orcid 0000-0002-5116-5070

Institution: Aarhus University

Language: English

Topic: Digital Humanities and Scholarship

Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W4412219862

FWCI:

Cites:

Cited by:

Related to: 10