The most common word in the “I have a Dream” speech is “freedom, an incredibly interesting discovery considering it is given that the speech was mage a century after slaves were historically freed with the Emancipation Proclamation. It shows the feeling of being trapped with the various laws that followed their freedom: from Jim Crow Laws, to the voting restricting clauses like the grandfather clause. The appearance of the words “faith”, and “God” say something about the speaker: Martin Luther King Jr. was a minister and his words of faith represent that. Finally his use of “mountainside”, “valley”, and “hills” use natural imagery to give an image of African American’s in this country: the constant uphill battle against stereotypes, the government, culture and history to achieve true equality and freedom.
“Nation” is the most frequent word in ngrams its peaks in times of stress for the nation: In 1917 the US entered WW1 and the year began with a German attack on Kingsland, NJ and the second peak is WW2.
“Freedom” also has peaks, albeit much smaller than “nation”‘s during the world wars.
“Negro” has a peak during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and the Civil War.
The most common words in the Declaration of Independence are words that are pretty common throughout history. Comparing to words in MLK’s speech there is an obvious difference in the conversations of activists and the conversation and interests of the world. Even freedom and justice continue on a downward slope potentially because people are under the impression that equality and freedom is no longer an issue that needs to be dealt with or spoken about despite the continued discrimination and racism that happens around the world. It is interesting that conversation about “rights” have become more frequent in the twenty-first century while “government” is heading in a downward direction in popularity. This could be because of recent conversations about rights of people including rights in privacy and the anger towards a government that people may be losing faith in because of the loss of those rights.
The patterns of MLK’s speech demonstrated in the figure and it’s link to the left highlight the important aspects of his speech and represent the speech in an interesting way because of the juxtaposition it represents. The speech begins with a optimistic statement of freedom before going toward’s the struggle black Americans have had to suffer before going back to the topic but freedom but this time as a plea and proclamation for freedom looking towards the future again.
