The Power of Words : How the use of words reflects societal opinion

Abstract: This essay examines the ways that the underlying meaning of the keywords queer and gay had changed between, and during, the periods of 1989-1991, 1999-2001 and 2009-2011 within the medium of written American English as collected by the Corpus of Historical American English across multiple written genres. The examination of the two chosen keywords was conducted by sorting the list-results of respective COHA queries into each period, and then conducted by a systematic sorting of the query results into one out of four categories depending on how the keywords were primed, framed and used. These categories are pejorative, sexuality, identity and lastly if the word was used in its historical context of meaning either something odd and/or strange in the case of queer, or to imply happiness in the case of gay. The essay concludes that over these 30 years, there is a clear indication that there has been a shift, moving from pejoratives and firmly cementing gay and queer as terms used by and to be attributed within the LGBTQ+ community.