Variations in average word valence of Russian books over a century and social change

Valence of words in books reflects the situation in a society and allows one to assess the perception of life even in those countries and periods of time when direct research on well-being has not been conducted. We use the Google Books Ngram diachronic text corpus to analyze changes in the average valence of words in Russian books. We show that changes in the average valence correlate with the results of surveys on well-being. The average valence also responds to major historical events and social changes. Like other similar studies, quantitative data on the level of valence of words are based on calculations using dictionaries with word valence ratings. For the first time, we have carried out a comparative study based on a number of the most relevant Russian dictionaries. We have found that the obtained results depend on the applied meaning of such dictionaries and their lexical composition. This shows the need for careful selection of dictionaries for future research.