Google Ngram Viewer

In my English 121 class, we recently watched a TED Talk involving the use of Google Ngrams (titled What we learned from 5 million books). 

The Google Ngram Viewer, is a tool that utilizes Google Books and records the frequency of words or sentences over the course of time. Not only does it document English, but several other languages as well such as: French, German, Spanish, and several others.

Feel free to check it out for yourself at books.google.com/ngrams!

I used this website to get some insight for my own project. I've been researching LGBT issues, especially those relating to the queer youth, Now what Google told me is rather disheartening.

As you can see from this graph, the words "gay" and "trans" (seen in red and orange respectively) have been common since the 1800's, although I highly doubt they held the same meaning then as they do today.

Also note, that the word lesbian (seen in green) did not begin to spike until the 1980's, and LGBT (in blue) has barely gotten off the ground since 2000, while the term genderqueer (in maroon) doesn't appear to rise at all.

So what does this mean?
Well, for starters, it might mean that interest in lgbt issues hasn't been relevant for very long.
That could be due to the fact that for a very long time, homosexuality was seen as a disease, and those afflicted were punished, rather than treated as people.
Even today, it's hard for lgbt people to be treated without discrimination.

I'll really have a tough time finding lgbt friendly sources to use for this project.