A tale of two perspectives

Today I compared the NGO Development Lexicon with the East African Story Lexicon from yesterday’s post.

Top 50 words (Left: stories, Right: NGOs)

Story tag cloud versus the NGO International Development tag cloud

Comparing word frequencies

Tag clouds don’t show much. So I compared the difference in the order of the words in each lexicon. First, top 50 words from stories. The number beside the term is where that same word appears in the NGO Development Lexicon.

So ‘people’ is the most used word in community stories, and it appears 9 slots lower in the Development Lexicon. These two words are frequently used by both groups. A score of -2000 means that word was not in the top 2000 words used by NGOs:

Story-centered world view:

Word	Relative NGO position
‘people’	-9
‘water’	-7
‘school’	0
‘help’	-8
‘children’	4
‘community’	0
‘organization’	-199
‘came’	-2000
‘life’	-17
‘kibera’	-806
‘get’	-101
‘group’	-178
‘helped’	-1123
‘day’	-134
‘good’	-232
‘kenya’	-2000
‘started’	-1385
‘government’	-153
‘time’	-114
‘food’	3
‘man’	-2000
‘problem’	-324
‘money’	-275
‘education’	24
‘called’	-1484
‘living’	-13
‘village’	-33
‘area’	-88
‘take’	-162
‘go’	-105
‘due’	-80
‘work’	7
‘come’	-435
‘need’	3
‘youth’	21
‘poor’	15
‘years’	-38
‘parents’	-48
‘youths’	-409
‘country’	-162
‘two’	-139
‘got’	-2000
‘girls’	31
‘home’	-29
‘use’	-14
‘went’	-2000
‘give’	-98
‘know’	-851

Words with biggest disparity

Next I show the top 50 words ranked by disparity in use frequency. All of these words are used frequently by NGOs. The “rank in stories” is how frequently that same word appears among the top 2000 words used in community stories. (The lower the rank, the more frequently stories use that word.) So all of these words represent the language most used by NGOs and least used by community members.

NGO (International Development)-centered world view:

Word	Rank in Stories
‘reading’	1837
‘cultural’	1883
’empower’	1736
‘climate’	1932
‘hundreds’	1974
‘tools’	1764
‘establish’	1976
‘participate’	1852
’empowerment’	1541
‘reproductive’	1681
‘percent’	1791
‘donations’	1588
‘include’	1590
‘rehabilitation’	1679
‘purchase’	1908
‘clinic’	1667
‘educational’	1410
‘classes’	1786
‘equipment’	1575
‘courses’	1927
‘skill’	1906
‘sport’	1866
‘technical’	1630
‘south’	1469
‘allow’	1423
‘womens’	1551
‘ability’	1818
‘scholarship’	1652
‘homeless’	1530
‘potential’	1543
‘increasing’	1694
‘english’	1671
‘receive’	1387
‘vocational’	1367
‘sources’	1905
‘impact’	1350
‘prepare’	1960
‘legal’	1618
‘music’	1322
‘network’	1389
‘middle’	1516
‘household’	1695
‘rates’	1558
‘refugees’	1539
‘goal’	1458
‘language’	1604
‘seed’	1745
‘delivery’	1956
‘institute’	1660
‘addition’	1511

Shocking disparities from above list: EMPOWER, EMPOWERMENT, CLIMATE, CLINIC, READING, REFUGEES, DELIVERY, and REPRODUCTIVE These are NGOish words.

Words used by both groups about equally:

Regardless of how common these words are in each lexicon, they’re used about equally as much. A positive score means NGOs use the more often; a negative score means storytellers use them more often.

Word	relative difference in ranking
‘meeting’	98
‘care’	96
‘act’	93
‘helps’	92
‘better’	88
‘wealth’	87
‘planting’	84
‘free’	82
‘abuse’	79
‘programme’	79
‘change’	78
‘lack’	78
‘lives’	77
‘start’	77
‘girls’	76
‘fight’	72
‘making’	70
‘job’	69
‘family’	68
‘young’	66
‘ground’	60
‘baby’	60
‘youth’	58
‘parent’	57
‘poor’	53
‘please’	52
‘education’	50
‘villagers’	48
‘die’	42
‘work’	41
‘need’	39
‘live’	38
‘use’	33
‘main’	32
‘sponsorship’	31
‘diseases’	24
‘step’	24
‘food’	23
‘serious’	23
‘secondary’	18
‘home’	17
‘plants’	17
‘living’	15
‘especially’	12
‘children’	9
‘part’	9
‘month’	8
‘organized’	7
‘community’	6
‘school’	3
‘years’	1
‘trees’	0
‘help’	-4
‘village’	-4
‘water’	-5
‘council’	-7
‘people’	-8
‘life’	-8
‘parents’	-8
‘studies’	-9
‘feel’	-13
‘born’	-18
‘examinations’	-18
‘bigger’	-19
‘enabled’	-20
‘hospital’	-21
‘finding’	-21
‘oh’	-21
‘society’	-23
‘situation’	-23
‘requirements’	-23
‘find’	-24
‘post’	-25
‘rustling’	-25
‘pride’	-27
‘problems’	-28
‘hate’	-28
‘scholastic’	-29
‘industries’	-30
‘injuries’	-31
‘creativity’	-32
‘gang’	-33
‘right’	-34
‘broken’	-35
‘diet’	-36
‘abusing’	-37
‘salary’	-38
‘plant’	-39
‘fm’	-39
‘dangers’	-41
‘birds’	-42
‘evil’	-43
‘determined’	-45
‘imagine’	-46
‘due’	-47
‘stated’	-47
‘situated’	-48
‘give’	-49
‘wondering’	-50
‘victoria’	-51
‘requirement’	-53
‘treated’	-54
‘shades’	-54
‘question’	-55
‘rakai’	-56
‘helping’	-57
‘men’	-57
‘area’	-58
‘periods’	-58
‘sisters’	-59
‘landed’	-60
‘programe’	-61
‘death’	-63
‘educated’	-63
‘mei’	-63
‘destruction’	-64
‘hearted’	-65
‘various’	-67
‘gun’	-67
‘leave’	-68
‘machines’	-69
‘deadly’	-70
‘placed’	-71
‘taps’	-72
‘go’	-73
‘choice’	-74
‘highly’	-75
‘discipline’	-75
‘visit’	-76
‘master’	-77
‘deny’	-78
‘citizens’	-79
‘searching’	-80
‘stolen’	-81
‘donated’	-82
‘convinced’	-82
‘championship’	-83
‘law’	-84
‘supplying’	-84
‘unicef’	-85
‘percentage’	-86
‘forums’	-87
‘kicked’	-88
‘get’	-90
‘maintained’	-90
‘long’	-92
‘buy’	-93
‘theres’	-93
‘time’	-95
‘two’	-96
‘heavy’	-96
‘oclock’	-97
‘kalenjins’	-98

That’s a start. I’m not sure if this is helpful, or interesting yet. It simply confirms my prior suspicion that what really is most useful is to allow each NGO to see how their language differs from the people in a particular community they serve. That will take a bit more tinkering.

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