Although I could not find any chronological trend of dumb’s frequency during the years 1810-2009 and 1990-2012, I did note that there was a significant pattern in the context dumb was published. Over the time period 1810-2009 the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) showed no constant trend in the frequency of dumb being used. In 1840 it peaked and stayed at that level until 1880 where it began to dissipate, except in 1970 there was a spike whose frequency was even higher than in 1840, but it again started to decrease. In the late 1990s there seems to be a plateau in frequency when looking over a two-century time span, however when I looked closely in that time period (1990-2012), the trend is again sporadic with troughs and spikes.
Even though there was no correlation in the frequency of dumbs presence, I did find that dumb was used in a fictional context significantly more than spoken, newspaper, magazine, or academic contexts. Looking specifically at the samples of text that counted toward the fictional number, majority used dumb as an adjective- to be foolish. Additionally dumb was used least in an academic context. Specifically in these samples, as I had mentioned in a previous assignment, the origin of where dumb is being used is important. The general pattern I saw was in American journals or subject matter used dumb to mean stupid, but in other academic disciplines, excluding the US’s, dumb was used to mean mute (COCA.)