Thursday 8 March 2012

What Can We Learn From 22,777 Harlequin Titles? Part II

In part I I introduced a recent article that analysed 22,777 Harlequin titles as a means to test the hypothesis that "the titles of Harlequin romance novels would address women's sex-specific mating interests." 

Here is the full list of the most common words with the article's count followed by the count of just the first 10 years worth of titles. Doctor and nurse, not surprisingly, are the most popular in these early years. If the count were extended to the mid 1960s we would see a much higher count for these words.

love           840    7
bride          835    0
baby          696    1
man           672    8
marriage     612    0
heart          478   3
secret         399   2
wife            397   4
doctor         388   30
night          340   6
Christmas    337   0
cowboy       314   1
wedding      298   0
child           260   1
family         249   1
Texas          227   2
nurse          224   36
woman        207   5
lady            202   13
husband      192   0

Here are two titles where the words "baby" and "woman" won't help with the hypothesis at all.

Harlequin 165 - April 1952


Harlequin 165 back

 Harlequin 160 - March 1952

Harlequin 160 back

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