# Mapping the Americanization of English in Space and Time

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.00781 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.00781/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 3 Jul 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Entropy and type-token ratio in gigaword corpora](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10227/) (2024)
- [Capturing the diversity of multilingual societies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02570/) (2021)
- [American cultural regions mapped through the lexical analysis of social media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.07649/) (2022)
- [When Dialects Collide: How Socioeconomic Mixing Affects Language Use](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10016/) (2023)
- [Geolocation differences of language use in urban areas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00533/) (2021)
- [Syntactic Variation Across the Grammar: Modelling a Complex Adaptive System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11869/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As global political preeminence gradually shifted from the United Kingdom to the United States, so did the capacity to culturally influence the rest of the world. In this work, we analyze how the world-wide varieties of written English are evolving. We study both the spatial and temporal variations of vocabulary and spelling of English using a large corpus of geolocated tweets and the Google Books datasets corresponding to books published in the US and the UK. The advantage of our approach is that we can address both standard written language (Google Books) and the more colloquial forms of microblogging messages (Twitter). We find that American English is the dominant form of English outside the UK and that its influence is felt even within the UK borders. Finally, we analyze how this trend has evolved over time and the impact that some cultural events have had in shaping it.