怕了嗎？一個不小心，他就「數」出了你在說什麼！

美國徳克薩斯州奧斯汀分校有一位偉大的心理學家，年紀輕輕的他發現了一個秘密：受過創傷的人如果像祥林嫂般四處講述自己的故事，會比那些把事情默默藏在心中的人要更加健康。這讓他意識到語言表達的神奇功效，並開始在意大家說的每一個小詞：I、He、She。從此，一發不可收拾，他深深得迷上了一件事情: 數單詞，是的，你沒看錯，這一數就是20年的春夏秋冬。這一數就開闢出了語言學研究的新陣地。

教授爺爺從甲殼蟲樂隊的歌詞數到美國政客的演講，再到基地組織的談話記錄。他當然不可能對著一段passage一個詞一個詞地數，或者radio一個詞一個詞地聽啦。教授爺爺自建了語料庫，藉助計算機來實現目標文本的分析。

1.研究工具

A Sample Text Corpus Analysis in LIWC

Because it is hard for the human brain to count and compare all the I』s, a』s and the』s in a sample of speech or writing, Dr. Pennebaker had to invent a software program to do it. The program,Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count(LIWC, pronounced luke), contains a vast dictionary, with each word assigned to one or more categories.

There are social words (talk, they), biological words (cheek, hands, spit), 「insight」 words (think, know, consider) and dozens of other groupings. LIWC compares a text sample to its dictionary and, within seconds, provides a readout of how many words appear in each category.

演講和文本中的那麼多詞語靠人數肯定是數不過來的，Pennebaker教授自建了名為LIWC的語料庫，裡面有社交辭彙，生物學辭彙，洞察類辭彙，及許多其他類辭彙。LIWC會把樣本文本與自己的詞庫對照，讀出每類別詞語在樣本文本中出現的次數，而這隻需要花幾秒鐘的時間。

2.數單詞與健康

To test-drive the program, Dr. Pennebaker, a pioneer in the field of therapeutic writing, asked a group of people recovering from serious illness or other trauma to engage in a series of writing exercises. The word tallies showed thatthose whose health was improving tended to decrease their use of first-person pronounsthrough the course of the study.

為了試運行該程序，治療寫作領域的先驅Pennebaker教授，讓一組得過重病，或者受過心理創傷的人進行寫作練習。計詞器結果顯示，健康正在改善的人，在測試中使用第一人稱的頻率越低。

Health improvements were also seen among people whose use of causal words — because, cause, effect — increased. Simply ruminating about an experience without trying to understand the causes is less likely to lead to psychological growth, he explained; the subjects who used causal words 「were changing the way they were thinking about things.」

使用because, cause, effect等因果詞頻率增加的人，健康狀況也隨之改善。僅僅思考一次經歷，而不去理解起因，不太能夠改善患者的心理狀況。他解釋道「使用因果詞的受試者正在改變他們理解事情的方式。」

Dr. Pennebaker has conducted numerous studies since then, all of them demonstrating that it』s not just what we say that matters but how we say it. Where traditional linguistics 「is really more interested in context, how sentences are put together and what a meaningful phrase is,」 he said, 「our approach is simply counting words.」

Pennebaker教授之後進行了更多的研究，研究結果均表明我們說什麼不重要，重要的是怎麼說。他說道：「傳統語言學更多關注的是語境，句子如何組合到一起及有意義的短語是什麼樣子的，而我們採用的方法只是數單詞。」

3.數單詞與性別差異

In study after study, the articles and pronouns, which text analysts often call 「junk words,」 have proved crucial. For example, Dr. Pennebaker has found thatmen tend to use more articles(a, the) andwomen tend to use more pronouns(he, she, they). The difference, he says, may suggest thatmen are more prone to concrete thinking and women are more likely to see things from other perspectives.

研究表明，冠詞和代詞，雖然在語篇分析中常常被視作「廢詞」，但事實上非常重要。例如，Pennebaker發現男人更傾向於使用冠詞，而女人更傾向於使用代詞。這就說明男人更傾向於具體思維，女人更傾向於從多角度看待事物。

4.應用價值

Still, the technique is drawing attention from a variety of sectors. Dr. Pennebaker has received a grant from the Army Research Institute to study the language of social dynamics, particularly how leaders use language. Joseph Psotka, a research psychologist at the institute, said that over time, this kind of study 「could be veryhelpful for training and leadership development, but precisely how we don』t know yet.」

目前，該技術吸粉無數，教授爺爺甚至得到軍方研究機構授權，研究語言的社會動態，特別是領導人使用的語言。該機構的心理學家Joseph Psotka指出：「這類研究未來有助於推進培訓和領導力發展，但我們目前還不知道該怎樣做。」

指導：馬瀟漪

編輯：劉曉琪

審校：陳怡宇

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