Birth of a new quantitative linguistics metric
📅 Thu 26 June 2025 at 11:22 BST
Welcome to the world, Rhetorical Density
Today I stood up at an international quantitative linguistics conference. Everyone in the room is a highly accomplished expert. They’re all academics. Professors. Gathered from across the world for this biennial conclave. They’re professionals in the field I only dabble in. I am neither a linguist, nor a statistician, and I can hardly claim to be an Arabist.
The moderator is a past president of the IQLA – International Quantitative Linguistics Association & the current president is in the audience. The presenter before me is highly impressive: a polished delivery using statistics that ChatGPT hasn’t yet taught me. I have never experienced “imposter syndrome” as severe as this.
I stood up and told them I’ve invented a brand new quantitative linguistics metric that no one has ever even thought about before. I’m calling it Rhetorical Density, and they’d better listen up because Rhetorical Density is going to open a whole new field of research in Arabic and other languages.
And no one objected. No one laughed at me. No one said it’s been done before. No one said it’s impossible. No one asked “why?” or “what does it mean?” They… just… “got it”. In fact, I felt they were on the edges of their seats.
They asked very pertinent questions, and were excited to hear my answers. They asked how my idea can be operationalised. They congratulated me, saying it’s a very worthwhile project. The pinnacle of my PhD journey so far, the love and validation I received in those 30 minutes made the 1000 mile trek across Europe to attend the conference completely worth it.
(By the way, this post contains 27 rhetorical devices in 291 words, giving it a rhetorical density of (only) 9.2784 rhetorical devices per 100 words. Clearly I’m not a rhetorician either 😬😂)
Originally posted on LinkedIn on 26 June 2025.
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