‘You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.’ ―Dita Von Teese
Here, we analysed 200 million online conversations to investigate transmission between individuals. We find that the frequency of word usage is inherited over conversations, rather than only the binary presence or absence of a word in a person’s lexicon. We propose a mechanism for transmission whereby for each word someone encounters there is a chance they will use it more often. Using this mechanism, we measure that, for one word in around every hundred a person encounters, they will use that word more frequently. As more commonly used words are encountered more often, this means that it is the frequencies of words which are copied.
{ Journal of the Royal Society Interface | Continue reading }
