Vive la différence: Tracing the (authorial) gender signal by multivariate analysis of word frequencies

Abstract

Multivariate analysis of word frequencies is used to identify the gender of authors in a corpus of 18th- and early 19th-century English sentimentalist and Gothic fiction. Results obtained with most frequent words are compared to those produced with medium-frequency Burrows's Zeta words characteristic for both genders. Gender-sensitive words from two periods (18th/19th c. and 19th/20th c.) are compared in terms of their usefulness for gender identification in literary texts.