Abstract
Individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia often misuse language, but whether such people are nevertheless capable of appropriate figurative language has not been studied. We investigated linguistic competence in schizophrenia and the relation between psychopathology and linguistic expressivity. Participants were 108 male, hospitalized, IQ-matched patients with schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and nonpsychiatric medical diagnoses. Free responses to a structured interview were analyzed. On measures of metaphoric, evocative, and idiomatic language, the speech of patients with schizophrenia was similar to other groups. As expected, patients with schizophrenia were also verbally more autistic and tangential but not more concrete. In all groups, there was a strong positive correlation between expressive and deviant language. We discuss the role of the primary and secondary processes in expressive and deviant language.
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