First of all, I define letter_only std::locale so as to ignore punctuations coming from the stream, and to read only valid “english” letters from the input stream. That way, the stream will treat the words "ways", "ways." and "ways!" as just the same word "ways", because the stream will ignore punctuations like "." and "!".

struct letter_only: std::ctype<char> 
{
    letter_only(): std::ctype<char>(get_table()) {}

    static std::ctype_base::mask const* get_table()
    {
        static std::vector<std::ctype_base::mask> 
            rc(std::ctype<char>::table_size,std::ctype_base::space);

        std::fill(&rc['A'], &rc['z'+1], std::ctype_base::alpha);
        return &rc[0];
    }
};

Solution 1

int main()
{
     std::map<std::string, int> wordCount;
     ifstream input;
     input.imbue(std::locale(std::locale(), new letter_only())); //enable reading only letters!
     input.open("filename.txt");
     std::string word;
     while(input >> word)
     {
         ++wordCount[word];
     }
     for (std::map<std::string, int>::iterator it = wordCount.begin(); it != wordCount.end(); ++it)
     {
           cout << it->first <<" : "<< it->second << endl;
     }
}

---

Solution 2

struct Counter
{
    std::map<std::string, int> wordCount;
    void operator()(const std::string & item) { ++wordCount[item]; }
    operator std::map<std::string, int>() { return wordCount; }
};

int main()
{
     ifstream input;
     input.imbue(std::locale(std::locale(), new letter_only())); //enable reading only letters!
     input.open("filename.txt");
     istream_iterator<string> start(input);
     istream_iterator<string> end;
     std::map<std::string, int> wordCount = std::for_each(start, end, Counter());
     for (std::map<std::string, int>::iterator it = wordCount.begin(); it != wordCount.end(); ++it)
     {
          cout << it->first <<" : "<< it->second << endl;
     }
 }