Correlation

Are certain words used more commonly in LDS parlance compared to that of other Christian faiths? To find out let's compare a few words that may be telling:

faith

works

baptism

prophet

missionary

Holy Ghost

Holy Spirit

God

Jesus

Hallelujah

covenant

praise

Find the frequency of these words in the the BNC by highlighting the registers S sermon and W_religion in the Register 1 box and noting the number of tokens. If you've don this right there will be 6683 tokens of God.

Search for the same words in General Conference Talks from the 1980s and 1990s (which is roughly what the BNC covers). Highlight “1980s” and “1990s.” Set “Options” to 10,000 hits. Add up the number of hits in the 80s and 90s. If you've done this right the frequency for “God” will be 10890.

Put the BNC frequency in the left column and the LDS frequencies (1980s plus 1990s) for the same word next to it in the right column.

Correlation

Now do a correlation by putting the actual number of tokens of each word you found in both of the corpora side by side. Use this Correlation Calculator. What are the R and p values that are calculated? Is there a significant difference? How do they compare to those values in the rank correlation?

Information to include on homework turned in:

1-Give the words and their actual frequencies in the BNC religion register and their actual frequencies in General Conference.

2-What are the R and p values that are calculated in the correlation?

3-What do the R and p values mean?

4-Look carefully at the words we've used. There may be a problem with the search results for some of them. What is the problem?