Cover not available

Article published In: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 28:1 (2023) ► pp.28–59

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

Corpus linguistics and clinical psychology

Investigating personification in first-person accounts of voice-hearing

ORCiD logo with link | Lancaster University
ORCiD logo with link | Lancaster University
ORCiD logo with link | University College London
 | Lancaster University
ORCiD logo with link | Durham University
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Lancaster University.

Published online: 29 April 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.21019.col
Abstract
Triangulating corpus linguistic approaches with other (linguistic and non-linguistic) approaches enhances “both the rigour of corpus linguistics and its incorporation into all kinds of research” (McEnery, T., & Hardie, A. (2012). Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory & Practice. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar: 227). Our study investigates an important area of mental health research: the experiences of those who hear voices that others cannot hear, and particularly the ways in which those voices are described as person-like. We apply corpus methods to augment the findings of a qualitative approach to 40 interviews with voice-hearers, whereby each interview was coded as involving ‘minimal’ or ‘complex’ personification of voices. Our analysis provides linguistic evidence in support of the qualitative coding of the interviews, but also goes beyond a binary approach by revealing different types and degrees of personification of voices, based on how they are referred to and described by voice-hearers. We relate these findings to concepts that inform therapeutic interventions in clinical psychology.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Approaches to personification of voices in clinical psychology
  • 3.Corpus linguistics and our approach to triangulation
  • 4.Data and methods
    • 4.1Data
    • 4.2Linguistic operationalization of complexity of voice personification
      • 4.2.1Procedure
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Corpus linguistic evidence related to the MINIMAL/COMPLEX binary classification
    • 5.2Linguistic differences between MINIMAL vs. COMPLEX descriptions of voices
      • 5.2.1Voice label types
      • 5.2.2Adjective collocate types
      • 5.2.3Verb collocate types
    • 5.3Exploring degrees of complexity through individual cases
      • 5.3.1The opposite ends of a scale of complexity of personification
      • 5.3.2Less clear-cut cases and the middle of a scale of complexity of personification
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (52)
References
Aijmer, K., & Rühlemann, C. (Eds.) (2015). Corpus Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Alderson-Day, B., Woods, A., Moseley, P., Common, S., Deamer, F., Dodgson, G., & Fernyhough, C. (2020). Voice-hearing and personification: Characterizing social qualities of auditory verbal hallucinations in early psychosis. Schizophrenia Bulletin, sbaa095. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, P., Brookes, G., & Evans, C. (2019). The Language of Patient Feedback: A Corpus Linguistic Study of Online Health Communication. Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., & McEnery, T. (2013). Sketching Muslims: A corpus driven analysis of representations around the word ‘Muslim’ in the British press 1998–2009. Applied Linguistics, 34(3), 255–278. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baumeister, D., Sedgwick, O., Howes, O., & Peters, E. (2017). Auditory verbal hallucinations and continuum models of psychosis: A systematic review of the healthy voice-hearer literature. Clinical Psychology Review, 511, 125–141. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beck, A. T., & Rector, N. A. (2003). A cognitive model of hallucinations. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 27(1), 19–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bell, V. (2013). A community of one: Social cognition and auditory verbal hallucinations. PLoS Biology, 11(12), e1001723. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Reppen, R. (1998). Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brezina, V. (2018a). Statistical choices in corpus-based discourse analysis. In C. Taylor & A. Marchi (Eds.), Corpus Approaches to Discourse (pp. 259–280). Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2018b). Statistics in Corpus Linguistics: A Practical Guide. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brezina, V., & McEnery, T. (2020). Introduction to corpus linguistics. In N. Tracy-Ventura & M. Paquot (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Corpora (pp. 11–22). Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brezina, V., McEnery, T., & Wattam, S. (2015). Collocations in context: A new perspective on collocation networks. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 20(2), 139–173. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Buttery, P., Caines, A., Tono, Y., Kawaguchi, Y., & Minegishi, M. (2012). Normalising frequency counts to account for ‘opportunity of use’ in learner corpora. In Y. Tono, Y. Kawaguchi, & M. Minegishi (Eds.), Developmental and Crosslinguistic Perspectives in Learner Corpus Research (pp. 187–204). John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collins, L. C., Semino, E., Demjén, Z., Hardie, A., Moseley, P., Woods, A., & Alderson-Day, B. (2020). A linguistic approach to the psychosis continuum: (Dis)similarities and (dis)continuities in how clinical and non-clinical voice-hearers talk about their voices. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 25(6), 447–465. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Covington, M. A., & McFall, J. D. (2010). Cutting the Gordian knot: The moving-average type–token ratio (MATTR). Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 17(2), 94–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crawford, P., Brown, B., & Harvey, K. (2014). Corpus linguistics and evidence-based health communication. In H. Hamilton & W. S. Chou (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Health Communication (pp. 75–90). Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daalman, K., Diederen, K. M. J., Blom, J. D., Kahn, R. S., & Sommer, I. E. C. (2011). The same or different? A phenomenological comparison of auditory verbal hallucinations in healthy and psychotic individuals. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 72(3), 320–325. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dayrell, C., Chakravarthi, R.-P., & Griffith-Dickson, G. (2020). Bringing Corpus Linguistics into Religious Studies: Self-representation amongst various immigrant communities with religious identity. Journal of Corpora and Discourse Studies, 31, 96–121. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Boer, J. N., Heringa, S. M., Van Dellen, E., Wijnen, F. N. K., & Sommer, I. E. C. (2016). A linguistic comparison between auditory verbal hallucinations in patients with a psychotic disorder and in nonpsychotic individuals: Not just what the voices say, but how they say it. Brain and Language, 1621, 10–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deamer, F., & Hayward, M. (2018). Relating to the speaker behind the voice: What is changing? Frontiers in Psychology, 9(11), 1–8. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive Psychology. Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Egbert, J., & Baker, P. (Eds.) (2020a). Using Corpus Methods to Triangulate Linguistic Analysis. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2020b). Synthesis and conclusion. In J. Egbert & P. Baker (Eds.), Using Corpus Methods to Triangulate Linguistic Analysis (pp. 268–282). Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fenekou, V., & Georgaca, E. (2010). Exploring the experience of hearing voices: A qualitative study. Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches, 2(2), 134–143. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hardstaff, S. (2015). “Papa said that one day I would understand”: Examining child agency and character development in Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry using critical corpus linguistics. Children’s Literature in Education, 461, 226–241. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hayward, M., Berry, K., & Ashton, A. (2011). Applying interpersonal theories to the understanding of and therapy for auditory hallucinations: A review of the literature and directions for further research. Clinical Psychology Review, 311, 1313–1323. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hayward, M., Awenat, Y., McCarthy-Jones, S., Paulik, G., & Berry, K. (2015). Beyond beliefs: A qualitative study of people’s opinions about their changing relations with their voices. Psychosis, 7(2), 97–107. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heale, R., & Forbes, D. (2013). Understanding triangulation in research. Evidence-based Nursing, 16(4), 98. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Knapton, O. (2021). The linguistic construction of the self in narratives of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 18(2), 204–226. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kråvik, B., Larøi, F., Kalhovde, A. M., Hugdahl, K., Kompus, K., Salvesen, Ø., Stiles, T. C., & Vedul-Kjelsås, E. (2015). Prevalence of auditory verbal hallucinations in a general population: A group comparison study. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 561, 508–515. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, G., Garside, R., & Bryant, M. (1994). CLAWS4: The tagging of the British National Corpus. In The International Committee on Computational Linguistics (Eds.), COLING 1994 Volume 1: The 15th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (pp.622–628). Association for Computational Linguistics. [URL].
Maijer, K., Palmen, S. J. M. C., & Sommer, I. E. C. (2017). Children seeking help for auditory verbal hallucinations; who are they? Schizophrenia Research, 1831, 31–35. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McEnery, T., & Hardie, A. (2012). Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory & Practice. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Milligan, D., McCarthy-Jones, S., Winthrop, A., & Dudley, R. (2013). Time changes everything? A qualitative investigation of the experience of auditory verbal hallucinations over time. Psychosis, 5(2), 107–118. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nayani, T. H., & David, A. S. (1996). The auditory hallucination: A phenomenological survey. Psychological Medicine, 261, 177–198. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pennebaker, J. W., Boyd, R. L., Jordan, K., & Blackburn, K. (2015). The Development and Psychometric Properties of LIWC2015. University of Texas at Austin. [URL]
Powers, A. R., Kelley, M. S., & Corlett, P. R. (2017). Varieties of voice-hearing: Psychics and the psychosis continuum. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 43(1), 84–98. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rayson, P. (2008). From key words to key semantic domains. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 13(4), 519–549. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Resnik, P., Resnik, R., & Mitchell, M. (2014). Introduction. In P. Resnik, R. Resnik, & M. Mitchell (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology: From Linguistic Signal to Clinical Reality (pp. iii–iv). Association for Computational Linguistics. [URL].
Schmid, H. (1994). Probabilistic part-of-speech tagging using decision trees. In D. Jones (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Conference on New Methods in Language Processing (pp. 44–49). Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Semino, E., Demjén, Z., & Collins, L. (2021). Person-ness of voices in lived experience accounts of psychosis: Combining literary linguistics and clinical psychology. Medical Humanities, 471, 354–364. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Semino, E., Demjén, Z., Demmen, J., Koller, V., Payne, S., Hardie, A., & Rayson, P. (2017). The online use of Violence and Journey metaphors by patients with cancer, as compared with health professionals: A mixed methods study. BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care, 7(1), 60–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sukthanker, R., Poria, S., Cambria, E., & Thirunavukarasu, R. (2020). Anaphora and coreference resolution: A review. Information Fusion, 591, 139–162. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taylor, C., & Marchi, A. (Eds.) (2018). Corpus Approaches to Discourse: A Critical Review. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomas, N., Hayward, M., Peters, E., Van der Gaag, M., Bentall, R. P., Jenner, J., Strauss, C., Sommer, I. E., Johns, L. C., Varese, F., García- Montes, J., Waters, F., Dodgson, G., & McCarthy-Jones, S. (2014). Psychological therapies for auditory hallucinations (voices): Current status and key directions for future research. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 40(4), S202–212. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thurmond, V. A. (2001). The point of triangulation. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 33(3), 253–258. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tovar, A., Fuentes-Claramonte, P., Soler-Vidal, J., Ramiro-Sousa, N., Rodriguez-Martinez, A., Sarri-Closa, C., Sarró, S., Larrubia, J., Andrés-Bergareche, H., Miguel-Cesma, M. C., Padilla, P. P., Salvador, R., Pomarol-Clotet, E., & Hinzen, W. (2019). The linguistic signature of hallucinated voice talk in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 2061, 111–117. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilkinson, S., & Bell, V. (2016). The representation of agents in auditory verbal hallucinations. Mind & Language, 31(1), 104–126. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Woods, A., Jones, N., Alderson-Day, B., Callard, F., & Fernyhough, C. (2015). Experiences of hearing voices: Analysis of a novel phenomenological survey. Lancet Psychiatry, 2(4), P323–331. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Woods, A., Jones, N., Berini, M., Callard, F., Alderson-Day, B., Badcock, J. C., Bell, V., Cook, C. C. H., Csordas, T., Humpston, C., Krueger, J., Larøi, F., McCarthy-Jones, S., Moseley, P., Powell, H., Raballo, A., Smailes, D., & Fernyhough, C. (2014). Interdisciplinary approaches to the phenomenology of auditory verbal hallucinations. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 40(4), S246–254. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zhuo, C., Jiang, D., Liu, C., Lin, X., Li, J., Chen, G., Xie, Z., Xu, Z., Zhou, C., & Zhu, J. (2019). Understanding auditory verbal hallucinations in healthy individuals and individuals with psychiatric disorders. Psychiatry Research, 2741, 213–219. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Fioravanti, Irene
2025. Connecting Corpus Linguistics and Psycholinguistics. In Exploration of the Intersection of Corpus Linguistics and Language Science, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Friginal, Eric & Dezheng William Feng
2025. Corpus Analysis of Language in the Workplace. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Rodríguez-Fuentes, Rodrigo A. & Valentina Concu
2025. Corpus Applications in ELT in Colombia: An Exploratory Survey. Profile: Issues in Teachers' Professional Development 27:1 ► pp. 115 ff. DOI logo
Sidis, Anna Elizabeth, Alison Rotha Moore, Judy A. Pickard & Frank P. Deane
2025. “Each person's experience, each person's needs”: How therapists open space for multiple perspectives during reflecting team family therapy supervision. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 51:1 DOI logo
Wang, Zihe
2025. “Searching on the internet guarantees you a cancer diagnosis”: An analysis of Chinese anxiety forum discourse. Language & Communication 105 ► pp. 106 ff. DOI logo
Atanasova, Dimitrinka
2024. Language of Mental Health. In Reference Module in Social Sciences, DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2025. Introduction. In Applying Corpus Linguistics to Illness and Healthcare, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2025. Representing Social Actors. In Applying Corpus Linguistics to Illness and Healthcare, ► pp. 153 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue