Eva-Maria Gortner Social Psychology of Language Use
Sept. 17, 2001
Walter Weintraub
I. Basic Assumptions
Weintraub started by examining the speech of his patients and correlated speaking styles with thinking
and behaving.
Patterns of speech reflect important personality traits and how people deal with stress
Main use of verbal behavior analysis: diagnosis of disorders and assessment of treatment response in
psychoanalytic therapy.
Examples:
1. He found that impulsive inpatients and binge eaters used a lot more adversative expressions
(“but”, “however”, “nevertheless”) than a group of normal control subjects (Weintraub &
Aronson, 1964, 1969).
Adversative expressions = “undoing” in psychoanalytic terms
2. Obsessive-compulsive and delusional individuals have been found to use more causal words
(“explanatory expressions”) (Weintraub & Aronson, 1965, 1974).
Explanatory expressions = “rationalization” in psychoanalytic terms
II. Collection of Verbal Data
- Weintraub was primarily interested to examine verbal mannerisms as a way of determining how people
cope with stress, therefore he gathered samples of speech under moderately stressful conditions.
- He instructed his subjects to speak uninterruptedly for 10 minutes about any subject he or she thought
difficult yet manageable.
- For the analysis of an individual, minimum of 5000 words is sufficient (i.e. Presidents)
III. Categories of Verbal Behavior Analysis
15 Categories (he also likes to call them “grammatical structures”):
1. I – high: self-preoccupation, low: detachment
2. We –
Interesting distinctions:
- The “we” used in impersonal ways (“We won the Gulf War”) indicates a “detached and
impersonal manner of speaking”
- High we, low I: avoidance of intimacy, commitment, and responsibility, especially when
nonpersonal references are high.
3. Me – most intimate of personal pronouns, may reflect passivity
4. Negatives – may reflect denial and stubbornness.
5. Qualifiers – includes expressions of uncertainty (I think…), modifiers that weaken statements (kind of
spooky), and phrases of vagueness (we enjoyed what you might call an evening of relaxation).
6. Retractors – but, although, nevertheless.
7. Direct References – to a) persons listening, b) conditions under which the speaker is speaking (i.e.,
limited time), c) physical surroundings.
8. Explainers : are equal LIWC’s causal words (because, therefore…).
- High amount may indicate rationalizing, low amount may appear dogmatic and insensitive.
9. Expression of feeling – all emotion words except: impersonal statements (It was a terrifying incident),
expression of interest, physical sensations, and conditional feelings.
10. Evaluators – expressions of judgment, i.e. best, won’t work, sinful, should, right, nice. High use:
indicates psychopathology.
11. Adverbial Intensifiers – any adverbs that increase the force of a statement, i.e. really, so, extremely.
12. Nonpersonal references – clauses that refer to people not known to the speaker, also include
impersonal pronouns, universal subjects (i.e., “one”), references to animals.
13. Optional categories : creative expressions, rhetorical questions, interruptions
IV. Focus on Selected Categories
A. Emotions
- Weintraub found that emotional expression goes way beyond the use of emotion words. The following
categories were experimentally confirmed to convey emotion:
