Defining Creativity: Finding Keywords for Creativity Using Corpus Linguistics Techniques

A computational system that evaluates creativity needs guidance on what creativity actually is. It is by no means straightforward to provide a computer with a formal definition of creativity; no such definition yet exists and viewpoints in creativity literature vary as to what the key components of creativity are considered to be. This work combines several viewpoints for a more general consensus of how we define creativity, using a corpus linguistics approach. 30 academic papers from various academic disciplines were analysed to extract the most frequently used words and their frequencies in the papers. This data was statistically compared with general word usage in written English. The results form a list of words that are significantly more likely to appear when talking about creativity in academic texts. Such words can be considered keywords for creativity, guiding us in uncovering key sub-components of creativity which can be used for computational assessment of creativity.

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