Geography’s changing lexicon: measuring disciplinary change in Anglophone human geography through journal content analysis

Much writing on changing trends in geographical practices is based on subjective interpretations of the discipline’s scholarly output. This paper introduces a data source which provides quantitative information on the discipline’s lexicon through full-text searching of the contents of five of the di...

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Published inGeoforum Vol. 37; no. 4; pp. 447 - 454
Main Authors Jackson, A., Harris, R., Hepple, L.W., Hoare, A.G., Johnston, R.J., Jones, K., Plummer, P.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Ltd 01.07.2006
Subjects
Content analysis
Human geography
Lexicon
Periodicals
Human geography
Lexicon
Journals
Content analysis
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Summary:Much writing on changing trends in geographical practices is based on subjective interpretations of the discipline’s scholarly output. This paper introduces a data source which provides quantitative information on the discipline’s lexicon through full-text searching of the contents of five of the discipline’s major Anglophone journals. Analysis of the large data set identifies two main trends in geography’s language and practices during the period 1950–1998: one group of terms associated with quantitative work became prominent in the 1970s but declined in relative importance thereafter – though by no means disappearing from the lexicon; the other, comprising a range of terms generally associated with cultural and social geography, increased in prominence from the 1980s on.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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content type line 23
ISSN:0016-7185
1872-9398
DOI:10.1016/j.geoforum.2005.12.005