So, I was feeling particularly geeky tonight, and I decided to use Wordle to do a visual analysis of the Doctor's and the Master's speech patterns. I somewhat arbitrarily decided to use the episode "Terror of the Autons" for my sample. I did a word cloud for the Doctor, using all of his lines in "Autons," and a word cloud for the Master, using all of his lines in "Autons." I based the color schemes of the clouds on the colors that the Doctor and the Master each seem to favor.

Here's what I did for the Doctor (now edited to repair some capitalization fail):



Here's what I did for the Master:



I noticed a few interesting trends. Of course, words require context, but I still think you can understand something about the ideas that are important to a person by looking at the words they use most often. The Master seems to be very, very fond of referring to the Doctor by name, but he also seems generally to use people's names when speaking to them. He uses Farrel's name nearly as often as he uses the Doctor's. I imagine he does this because using a person's name gets and keeps his or her attention and focus--it's a form of control. He's also inclined to use the words "worry" and "little" quite often. This trend could be interpreted many ways, probably, but I'm inclined to think his use of these words reflects his nervous temperament and his interest in scale, respectively.

The Doctor's speech patterns, on the other hand, seem to reflect the high value he places on thinking and thoughtfulness, as well as his assertive personality. Look how often he uses the words "must," "well," "yes," "know," and "think"!

If anyone else has thoughts on the speech patterns of the Doctor and the Master, I'd love to hear them. I probably find the topic more compelling than I should.