Cynthia Whissell

THE DICTIONARY OF AFFECT IN LANGUAGE

ABSTRACT This chapter examines the Dictionary of Affect in Language , one of many acceptable routes to the measurement of emotion, in terms of research conducted with the dictionary and in terms of a framework of metameasurement that includes the question of concept definition and a consideration of the state–trait distinction. The Dictionary of Affect contains over 4000 words and each word in the dictionary is accompanied by a score along the affective dimensions of Evaluation and Activation. In use, the dictionary can be applied to any verbal material, ranging from freely produced text to lists of words and passages of literature. Significant effects associated with scores, which are based on the dictionary, are summarized, the reliability and validity of the instrument are discussed, and some potential limitations are suggested. In conclusion, the role of the dictionary and its potential for future development are considered.

A Dictionary of Affect in Language: IV. Reliability, Validity, and Applications

The 1984 Dictionary of Affect in Language by Sweeney and Whisseli includes more than 4,000 words which have been rated along the bipolar affective dimensions of Evaluation and Activation. A series of three experiments was conducted to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Dictionary and to improve its reliability by the inclusion of additional ratings. Exp. I, II, and III demonstrate the reliability of the Dictionary values and provide evidence of concurrent validity. A further series of three experiments (IV, V, VI) was designed to apply the Dictionary as a tool for assessing or preselecting the affective tone of words. Success (as defined by significant effects) is associated with the use of the Dictionary in choosing words for a verbal learning experiment (IV) and its use to score freely produced self-descriptive word lists (V) and the description of famous media characters (VI).

Using the Revised Dictionary of Affect in Language to Quantify the Emotional Undertones of Samples of Natural Language

Whissells Dictionary of Affect in Language, originally designed to quantify the Pleasantness and Activation of specifically emotional words, was revised to increase its applicability to samples of natural language. Word selection for the revision privileged natural language, and the matching rate of the Dictionary, which includes 8,742 words, was increased to 90%. Dictionary scores were available for 9 of every 10 words in most language samples. A third rated dimension (Imagery) was added, and normative scores were obtained for natural English. Evidence supports the reliability and validity of ratings. Two sample applications to very disparate instances of natural language are described. The revised Dictionary, which contains ratings for words characteristic of natural language, is a portable tool that can be applied in almost any situation involving language.

A PARSIMONIOUS TECHNIQUE FOR THE ANALYSIS OF WORD-USE PATTERNS IN ENGLISH TEXTS AND TRANSCRIPTS

This article describes a new data base for English word-usage patterns. It improves on older efforts by including television and personal commentaries as sources for the main corpus studied. More than a third of a million words were sampled from media and nonmedia sources and analyzed to produce a parsimonious listing of 6505 words (types) and their frequencies. The reliability and validity of this list were established in a variety of ways, and a computer program based on the list was used to analyze two different sets of data (an exploratory set and one representing an a priori hypothesis about word usage). A mere 206 different words were seen to account for 57% of all the words in the corpus, and 95% of this small set had its roots in Middle English or some older form of English.

A COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR THE OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS OF STYLE AND EMOTIONAL CONNOTATIONS OF PROSE: HEMINGWAY, GALSWORTHY, AND FAULKNER COMPARED

An SPSSX computer program was used to score 48 100-word text passages from novels written by Ernest Hemingway, John Galsworthy, and William Faulkner. The program, called TEXT.NLZ, produced more than 50 objective measures of each passage, including several measures of punctuation, word frequency, and emotionality. Passages written by the three authors were easily discriminable in terms of objective measures, and differences among authors with respect to the objective measures accurately reflected the content of subjective critical comments describing the work of each author.

Mate selection in popular women's fiction.

A study of twenty-five popular women’s novels and six famous romantic stories has led to the conclusion that such novels and stories are tales of mate selection and mating commitment. Pérusse’s (1994) predictions with respect to mate choice are confirmed by the activities of male and female protagonists in the novels (binomial test,p<.01 in all cases). Males choose mates on the basis of sexual exclusivity and fertility. Females choose mates on the basis of economic factors and parenting potential. As well, male and female characters differ in terms of their display of functional emotions.

PLEASURE AND ACTIVATION REVISITED: DIMENSIONS UNDEFUYING SEMANTIC RESPONSES TO FIFTY RANDOMLY SELECTED "EMOTIONAL WORDS1

49 subjects rated 50 words of affect randomly selected from a dictionary. Factor analyses of the 11 scales used documented the presence of a Pleasure factor and an Activation factor that jointly explained 86% of the variance. With the addition of Personal-ness as a third factor, 92.6% of the variance in mean ratings could be accounted for, and 5 clear clusters of words emerged.

PHONOEMOTIONAL PROFILING: A DESCRIPTION OF THE EMOTIONAL FLAVOUR OF ENGLISH TEXTS ON THE BASIS OF THE PHONEMES EMPLOYED IN THEM '

Research employing three large lists of words rated along emotional dimensions (total N= 15,761 words) supported a prior claim that most phonemes have a distinct emotional character. Different phonemes tended to occur more often in different types of emotional words. When phonemes were grouped along eight radii in a two-dimensional emotional space defined by Pleasantness and Activation (Pleasantness, Cheeriness, Activation, Nastiness, Unpleasantness, Sadness, Passivity, and Softness), it became possible to draw profiles of texts in terms of their preferential use of different classes of phonemes. Four experiments were performed to illustrate the manner in which phonemes in nonsense words are related to emotion, and evidence of the validity of character assignments was investigated and received support in three further analyses. The emotionality of phonemes was related to both place and manner of articulation and to properties of the auditory signal itself. Phonoemotional profiles were drawn for several types of material and provided supporting evidence for the validity of the assignment of emotional character to phonemes.

LINGUISTIC COMPLEXITY OF ABSTRACTS AND TITLES IN HIGHLY CITED JOURNALS

The linguistic style and emotional tone of thousands of tides and abstracts was analyzed for articles appearing in psychology Journals ranked among the top 5% of all cited Journals in the social sciences for 1995. Citation status was predicted by several measures of linguistic complexity: punctuation in the title, use of rare words, and sentence length. Abstracts from the top 5% group as a whole were also characterized by complexity: abstractness, low use of functional words, use of rare words, and sentence length. Categories of Journals differed in emotional tone in a manner consistent with their contents, suggesting different emotional experiences for readers. The process of abstracting is described as one involving a tradeoff between accuracy or depth of communication and clarity or breadth, with breadth being especially important in an era in which electronic methods of dissemination put abstracts within the reach of an increasingly larger group of researchers.

Phonosymbolism and the Emotional Nature of Sounds: Evidence of the Preferential Use of Particular Phonemes in Texts of Differing Emotional Tone

This article addresses the emotional meaning (phonosymbolism) of the most basic unit of language—the phoneme. Language excerpts from many sources were transcribed phonetically with the help of a computer program. The distributions of phonemes in different sources (song lyrics, poetry, word lists, advertisements) were correlated with the emotionality of the language along two dimensions (activation, evaluation) which had been rated by the Dictionary of Affect using another computer program. Significant results characterized all phases of the analysis. Phonemes were distributed differently in different language samples. Frequency of phonemes in a language sample as well as frequency of phonemes in individual words were correlated with emotion. For example, the phoneme /l/ (the one appearing twice in the word lullaby) was used more often in pleasant language samples, in soft or tender language samples, and in passive words. The phoneme /r/ (appearing twice in the word roar) was found more often in unpleasant words and in active words. Possible sources of the relationship between sound production and emotion are discussed.