CLINICALLY, psychological judgments about a person are made in l arge par t through evaluation of linguistic phenomena. The ideas and notions expressed by the patient in talking, or as a response to psychological tests, provide the material from which inferences are made as to his personality. The use of recording devices makes available a permanent record, not only of what the patient says but of the particular manner and form in which he expresses himself. In previous papers on the language of manic 1 and hysteric 2 patients we have tried to show that the form of expression, as well as the content, is psychologically significant. The present paper is an extension of this study of the formal characteristics of language to obsessive-compulsive and paranoid schizophrenic patients.The composition of the spoken language of an individual or group can be viewed as an equilibrium attained between two tendencies. Statistical properties, grammatical divisions, rules of syntax, and denotative word meaning impose an inherent stability and universality of structure. On the other hand, a certain freedom of selection in arrangement, choice of vocabulary, word frequency, and the connotative use of words appears to be the privilege of the individual. The final crystallization could be expected to reveal the pull of these opposing tendencies and to give a par¬ ticularizing quality to the language of an individual or group.In the present paper comparison is made of some of the formal characteristics of language as it is used by groups of individuals contrasting sharply in psychological make-up. The method used is that of tabulating categories of grammar and word frequencies. This method may at first sight appear as a naïve or sterile approach to the complexity of language. A few explanatory statements may perhaps indicate the direction of thought and general perspective that occasioned this counting of words.It is apparent that despite a relatively fixed range in the structural composition of language, different persons alter the arrangement and frequency of expression as much as the content of their communication. The person who draws attention to himself, or inserts himself into his discourse as a commentator, will shift the bal-
A PREVIOUS publication1 reported some quantitative characteristics of the structure of manic speech. Function, as revealed by the pattern of language, is the focus of the present study. Judgments of design, motivation, relationships, intensity, and value become inseparable from even the simplest observations made upon language as a unit of behavior, as distinct from those made upon language as a codified system of signs. Hence these observations are presented as an attempt to differentiate various aspects of language behavior, and are a preliminary approximation rather than an exposition of fact.Language is both a highly flexible and, at the same time, very rigidly determined form of behavior. While it varies sensitively with the individuality of the speaker, it bears also the impress of a pattern that transcends the individual and reflects the common denominators of mental and emotional states. This paper is one of the series on language. Dr. Stanley Cobb has given helpful criticism.
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