Corpus Linguistics - Text Analysis of All Watchtower Publications since 1800's

by objectivetruth 48 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Terry

  For this sort of thing to be truly end-result useful in a pragmatic way, a list of questions might be in order.

  Trends in (later abandoned) teachings blossom and fade. The decay period might be quite illuminating.

  How many abandoned teachings vs. how many "adjusted" ones.

  The Millions Now Living Will Never Die false prophecy was 1925 oriented. Identifying the correlation between those two items would be key.

  The flip-flop interpretation on Romans 13:1, 2 from 1929 to 1962 is quite important.

  The use of the word DISPENSATION as well as TYPE and ANTITYPE (Antitypical). The "Greater" Moses, the "Greater Elijah".

  Certainly the use and frequency of NEW LIGHT and the grafting on and hijacking of the scripture so as to change "path of the righteous" into "truth."

  The connection between "worship" and "Jesus" is important.

  A comparison of statements employing "evidently" might be comically enlightening.

  The history of the significant phrase: NEW WORLD ORDER and NEW WORLD SOCIETY on a timeline of use might be worth studying.

  The phrase "Jehovah's Christian Witnesses" is pretty important as to the trending use.

  The word LOYALTY is key. Especially in conjunction with the words: GOD'S ORGANIZATION or JEHOVAH'S ORGANIZATION.

  How about the phrase, "It would be well . . ."?And . . . "Happifying"
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  jonza

  See PM :)
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  objectivetruth

  NeveraJW - "

  "Check the number of times the words, as a group, obey/bedience/obedient/obediently/disobey/disobedience appear in the watchtower magazine (study edition) for the last few decades. I grouped the years in decades (80's, 90's, etc) and noticed that the trend since the 80's is upwards, especially in the last few years. One reason could be that they split the watchtower in two parts, the cultic and the public version. Therefore, those words were moved heavily to the cultic side. I feel that there's more to it though. My results just for 2012, 2013 and 2014 are 77,85 and 88 respectively (not including December 2014). Previous years were markedly lower."

  - Great Idea! I'll add this to the list and let you know when it's done.

  Smiddy -

  "But what does all this mean in laymans terms ? Is this a tool for the average Joe ? Jane ? whos left the borg.?

  Sorry for my ignorance , others here see it as a great tool , for further exposing the WT Society , I hope your right ."

  - This will be a tool for the Average Joe,regardless whether or not they are active or ex-JW's

  I'll provide a few example of it's Usage potential..

  Analyze a few Scriptures like Jeremiah 25:33 and John 3:16 - Jeremiah = Fear Mongering / John = Love & Forgiveness.

  1. Find all occurrences of these 2 scriptures in all Publications over the past 35 Years, and then create a Graph that shows, how the Trend has Gradually moved away from Love for all Men to a Message of Obedience and Fear.

  2. Analyze key events in world history and Find Propaganda techniques in the Publications.. Example look at Publications Post 9/11 and look for frequency of words like "Terrorism" "The End is Near" "Stay close to the Organization"

  3. Systematically analyze all Usages and Interpretations of key scriptures used for Doctrine.

  4. Analyze Key WT historical Events and look for trends.- Example look for words like "Speculation" or "Impatient" after 1975

  5. Create an Invite only online tool that allows the User to search all Publications the same way they now search wol.jw.org

  JWFacts - Great Ideas, and I'll put these at the top of the list. Please free to PM me anytime.. Your website was one of the major contributors for my finding TTATT , and for this reason I'd love to help you any way that I can.

  Newyork44m - Right now I'm using AntConc , but I'm looking to add a "Tag Cloud" as well as an "Intent Analyzer" tool once i'm done with the First Stage of Text Clean Up and Cataloging.I'll check out Nvivo.. thanks for the Tip.

  WTFree- YES! That is my goal exactly, understand how the WT has used the Scriptures to Drive Propaganda and Fear Mongering. - Also understand how they attempt to Manipulate publishers gradually through their Publications. (I hate NewSpeak)

  Suavojr- Thank You. (It's not great yet though)

  Apognophos - Thanks for the Advice and I agree I with all that you said.

  frankie - This is a Good Idea as well. thank you
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  Watchtower-Free

  2013 Watchtower Library CDROM Spanish and English download link

  https://www.mediafire.com/folder/nf5lfbkfzz1dt/Watchtower_Library_CDrom
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  objectivetruth

  Terry,

  What you mentioned about Adjusted teachings, is one of my top interests.

  The whole "light gets brighter" defense becomes much weaker, if we're able to Systematically Analyze each Doctrine and it's history of change.

  I also believe that we will be able to Discover correlative changes in Doctrine..

  An example is the understanding of "The Sheep & the Goats", I'd like to see how the the Understanding of the "Wheat and the Weeds" has changed alongside the Sheep and the Goats.

  It's easy for a JW to envision a group of Spirit Anointed men sitting in a Room all Deeply engaged in Bible Research & Discussion on a certain Scripture.. After many months of Diligent Study these men are "guided" to understand a scripture differently.

  However when there is Proof that "Light became brighter" as a result of another "Light" changing, or as a result of external pressure.Or there is a Trend that shows a reactionary approach to Bible Understanding things start to look more Big Brother, in the eyes of the Faithful JW.

  Alongside Doctrinal changes we can extract Increased or Decreased usage of Certain Key Scriptures, or as you mentioned key phrases.

  As an example, after the July,15 2013 WT was released we might see the term "Obey" sky rocket, or "Loyalty" to the Slave.

  I love the idea of extracting words like Evidently and Apparently. Thanks for the Input.
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  objectivetruth

  Thank You Watchtower-Free! I needed that also.
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  Apognophos

  I also believe that we will be able to Discover correlative changes in Doctrine.

  I like these ideas. Maybe you could also look for all the references to Armageddon happening by the end of the 20th century ("end of this century", etc.; it will help if you can use wildcards, like "end of * century"). I think they stopped saying that after the '80s.
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  Raton

  Marked.....Is that the longest page 1 ever? :P Good Work!
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  losingit

  Cool beans! I'd love to see the analysis this will offer us all. :-D
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  breakfast of champions

  You can do A LOT with a corpus.

  You could analyze negative semantic prosody. . . . . see how it's used with regards to "loaded language". . .

  Even analyze bullying tactics.

  Great stuff!