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• 1 2016-12-11T17:43:52-08:00 2000-2016 12 plain 362728 2016-12-17T15:08:28-08:00 In this final section of NYT  articles leading from 2000 up to the present day, some terms are as prevalent  as they have been in the earlier decades of this journalistic history; terms such as children, men, home, work, and college. And yet, more new terms seem to appear here than at any other point over the last six decades. Words like science, computer and math are all common enough to hold spots in the Cirrus word cloud. A further search for scien* yields a count of 66, computer* a count of 56, and math* a count of 33. This shows a cultural focus on women breaking into the STEM fields that were previously much more exclusionary than they are today. Another interesting shift regarding accepted gender roles can be found by comparing the count of child* (57) in this corpus to that of 1940-1959 wherein child* yields a count of 81 despite the total word count of this corpus being almost 10 000 words higher. This shows a shift away from motherhood as the defining role of women. We even see language related to menstruation in the Cirrus word cloud in the word pads, showing that language related to female embodiment is no longer too taboo a subject to be published in a daily newspaper.
   
  An evolution in discourse surrounding the gender binary and queer identities is also demonstrated with the introduction of the words transgendered (10) and transgender (7). And, amazingly, lesbian* (37) is more frequent than the term husband* which only yields a count of 31. In fact, the umbrella term queer can finally be found in print, even with its modest count of 3. That being said, a lot of information can be gleaned from the language that is less prevalent or even altogether absent. The term black for example, isn’t as prevalent in this set of years as in the previous score, with a count of only 15, which is rather surprising considering the numerous events surrounding awareness  of systemic racism in America over the last decade. Perhaps this should be taken as a sign that, though we have made leaps and bounds in terms of cultural understandings of acceptable language for discussing women’s issues in widely-circulated media, there is still much progress to be made if we hope to succeed in developing intersectional understandings of what it means to be a woman. 
  
  Analysis of articles from 2000-2016 in Voyant
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  To read about the methodology used in the creation of this project, click here.
   
  
  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.