Language is hardwired to be optimistic, even if people aren’t

Is English a perversely positive language no matter what is going on in the world? i09.com reports on a new study by mathematicians at the University of Vermont that analyzed millions of online texts to reach a conclusion that English is strongly biased toward being positive. As the article wisely points out this finding becomes more controversial when used as a support to the idea of language as a social construct, meant to engender positive relations between groups. It would also be fascinating to extend the survey to other popular languages such as Spanish and French to see if the results correlate.