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Linguistic use of Ngram

Colleagues involved in linguistic study may find Google’s Ngram feature helpful as a starting point for discussion about the use of words over the centuries.  A word of caution, though: entering the words “abortion,” “infanticide,” and “euthanasia” results in a graph which may be misleading.

As pro-life scholars know, “abortion” was often called “infanticide” by British and American feminist activists in the nineteenth century.  This may account for apparent rise in the use of the term “infanticide” just before the American civil war when protective laws were beginning to be passed to ban abortion for the express purpose of safeguarding both mother and child.  Although discussed in a biased newspaper, a review of the Ngram feature can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/books/17words.html?_r=3&ref=todayspaper.  The database can be found through http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/.

Dr. Jeff Koloze

Dr. Jeff Koloze (English, Kent State University) is president and founder of Koloze Consultants, whose objective is "...to conduct research on the life issues for presentation and publication." Before his retirement under STRS (Ohio) in 2014, Dr. Koloze was Associate Professor of English at the Cleveland, Ohio Campus of South University. His most recent administrative position was Campus College Chair for the College of Humanities, the College of Natural Sciences, and the College of Social Sciences from 2005-2011 at the Columbus, Ohio Campus of the University of Phoenix; in 2009 he was appointed one of twelve senior research fellows for that institution. Dr. Koloze has taught communications, undergraduate and graduate English, and humanities courses since 1989 at several colleges and universities in the Cleveland, Columbus, and Springfield, Ohio metropolitan areas. His primary research interest is the presentation of the right-to-life issues of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia in literature; most of his publications are available in conference proceedings and on the web. He has presented over eighty papers before academic and professional organizations on these topics, most recently at conferences at the American University of Rome (2015), Fordham University (2014), Harvard University (2010 and 2012), Ryerson University (Toronto, 2009), the University of Notre Dame (2011), and the University of San Francisco (2013). He is the author of An Ethical Analysis of the Portrayal of Abortion in American Fiction: Dreiser, Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos, Brautigan, and Irving (Edwin Mellen, 2005) and Testament to a Niagara Obsession (Spare Change Press; Ten Leaves Poetry Series, 2014). Dr. Koloze invites colleagues and students to join him on Facebook, Gab, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networking services. He can be emailed at [email protected].