Link between Personality and Language
Kenneth Phun
Could someone please help me with any information on the possible link
between the type of personality what may have (eg. sanguine, melancholic
etc.) with the language used ( ie. preferred words used; favourite
expressions; language style - rhythm, intonation etc.; etc. etc.
I beleive this is a rather new area and not much would have been done on it
yet...
Much obliged on any help you could offer...
Thanks in advance
Kenneth Phun
J. S. Oppenheim
Sorry--it's an old area, at least with regard to intelligence testing
where verbal performance measures probe both the subject's grasp of the
lexicon as well interpretive abilities in reading.
As for the myriad personality typologies, I would not envy you the task
of characterizing and isolating discrete writing styles and proposing
correlation for anything other than a gross intelligence measure and
level of education. Even then, keep in mind that William Faulkner,
Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald never completed college (but
Faulkner came close). Moreover, as the writers who have spent their
lives entertaining us go, each represents a distinct personality more
than personality type, and even there, if you delve into the biographies
of the scribe tribe, the relationship between authors and their works
will defy any clear sensibility with the possible exception of the
populating of literary works--genuinely monastic or reclusive writers
such as J. D. Salinger have a little less to draw on with regard to
recasting the midway in the human carnival. But then what do you do
with a marginally more outgoing writer like Stephan King? I doubt the
halls of academe continue to echo with passionate arguments over
Hemingway's (choose one) codes, bravery or cowardice, or sexual
temperament, but tackling such subjects almost always produces more
ambiguity rather than less.
One last idiot's note: I studied boredom in graduate school (no joke)
and developed empirical evidence suggesting that English majors and
engineering majors, for all their across the campus animosity, were
equally object oriented, equally inept with other people, and equally
likely to experience boredom on similar schedules and levels of
intensity.
Only the cranks of social science would venture to derive any further
meaning from such a note. As a proposed bipolar personality trait--i.e.,
"object vs. people oriented"--amenable to Likert probing, writing
ability, much less style, would seem not to interact with that
characteristic one wit.
If you come up with something like, "Literary Impressionism and Sexual
Aggression in Small Bohemian Enclaves," I'd certainly like to hear of
it.
:)
//JSO
P.S. Language and the rhythms of conversing behavior as cultural traits
have been well studied by anthropologists--raid the stack for Edward
Tillich Hall (e.g., _The Dance of Time_). Personality remains a whole
other kettle.
--
J. S. Oppenheim
President
The Communicating Arts Agency
8814 Hunting Lane, Ste. 201
Laurel, MD 20708
O/F: 301.725.7010
E: com...@smart.net
I: http://www.smart.net/~commart
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