Linguistic Style Research Articles

Words Matter: The Role of Readability, Tone, and Deception Cues in Online Credit Markets

AbstractUsing debt crowdfunding data, we investigate whether borrowers’ writing style is associated with an online lender and borrower behaviors, whether the information contained in linguistic style can mitigate information asymmetry in peer-to-peer markets, and whether online investors correctly interpret the economic value of written texts. Peer-to-peer lenders bid more aggressively, are more likely to fund, and charge lower rates to online borrowers whose writing is more readable, more positive, and contains fewer deception cues. Moreover, such borrowers are less likely to default. Online investors, however, fail to fully account for the information contained in borrowers’ writing.

How Airbnb Titles Influence Guests’ Decision Making: Linguistic and Spatial Analysis Approach

ABSTRACT Drawing on selective attention theory and language expectancy theory, and using a mixed method of text analysis and spatial analysis, this study examined the impacts of listing titles and locations on the financial performance of Airbnb properties. Guests’ preferred words and expected informative cues about property, location, and environment in Airbnb titles were first captured by a qualitative study. The results of the second study, which controlled for the spatial dependency based on the Hotspot analysis and geographically weighted regression for4,938 property-level data in Phuket and Bangkok in Thailand, revealed that the linguistic styles and characteristics affecting the properties’ financial performance were significantly different between the two cities. For hosts in hot spots, affective and perceptive linguistic styles on the titles are recommended, while function-oriented information and photos should be highlighted for the cold spot areas.

The Adoption Post-Linguistic Style and Persuasive Communication of Capital Market Influencers

Previous research found the use of post-linguistic features (emotionality, complexity, and informality) affect social media communicators success in persuading and attracting audiences. This study aims to explore the differences in linguistic styles used in persuasive communication adopted by capital market social media influencers. Using 5.710 instagram posts from a sample of five influencers and 4.149 instagram posts from a sample of five securities companies, we applied a text mining method to identify linguistic features used by the influencers and compare the characteristics of linguistic features used by individual influencers and institutional influencers. The results suggest that individual influencers adopt more persuasive linguistic model than institution influencers. This study contributes to the literature pertaining to social media influence strategy, particularly in describing the linguistic features used by social media influencers (individual and institutional influencers). Keywords: Communication; Linguistic style; Social media content; Text mining

“Think More about Camels”, or A Usual Year in the History of Russia Seen from an Unusual Angle

The authors review 1837. Russia’s Quiet Revolution, a monograph by P. Werth published by Oxford University Press in 2021. The book is an attempt to conceptualise the reign of tsar Nicholas I until 1837, the year of a “Quiet Revolution” in the Russian Empire – manifesting itself in a series of sweeping changes leading to the creation of new institutions, concepts, and experiences that finally showed its results in the following periods of Russian history. The author examines ten thematic episodes (historical events) that took place in the Russian Empire during the year 1837 in its broader historical contexts (within the country and beyond its borders), which he united around the common issue of the formation of the Russian national identity. The book is interesting, on the one hand, as a genuinely scholarly study, which, on the other hand, includes all characteristics typical of popular science in terms of structure and linguistic style. Apart from this, the author’s conceptual observations make it possible to take a new look at the well-known events of Russian history during the period of Nicholas I’s “minor reforms”.

When Positivity Pays Off: Rhetorical Complementarity and Crowdfunding Performance

This study examines how different linguistic styles of entrepreneurial pitches complement one another to enhance the persuasion of pitches, which in turn, affects crowdfunding performance. Combining rhetoric theory and signaling theory, I posit that rhetoric that evokes emotional appeals—optimistic languages in particular—increases crowdfunding performance when combined with rhetoric of reasoning and credibility. The model was tested in a sample of 20,709 Kickstarter campaigns in 2016. Results show that optimistic languages, when employed with the rhetoric elaborating on the rationality of the campaign, improve crowdfunding performance. Crowdfunding performance is also increased when optimistic languages are coupled with the rhetoric that strengthens entrepreneurs’ credibility. This study shows that the signaling effects of rhetoric lie in the complementarity of multiple linguistic styles.

“AI Love You”: Linguistic Convergence in Human-Chatbot Relationship Development

Social chatbots are increasingly designed to offer companionship to humans to improve their psychological well-being. Can they develop social relationships with the technology? How are people influenced by chatbots? Studies testing whether humans will adapt their communication when interacting with a chatbot have provided somewhat mixed results. Applying Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), this study takes a longitudinal, quantitative approach to answer these questions. It employs natural language processing (NLP) techniques to compare the linguistic patterns in 29,885 conversations between human users and their social companion chatbot, Replika, scraped from Reddit. The results showed that people’s linguistic styles gradually converged with that of the chatbots. This convergence was positively related with the relationship development between the user and their Replika companion. These findings suggest that human behavior can be influenced by chabots through interaction and people can develop relationships with their technological companions.

The influence of firm's feedbacks on user-generated content's linguistic style matching-An explanation based on communication accommodation theory.

In virtual brand communities, users and firms continuously use different or similar linguistic styles to communicate with each other. Existing literature has demonstrated that the linguistic style matching (LSM) between the coming users’ posts [user-generated content (UGC)] and existing firms’ content will influence users’ behavior, like promoting users to release more posts. However, little research has been conducted to analyze how firms’ feedbacking behaviors influence LSM. To fill the gap, this paper uses Python to measure the LSM between 69,463 posts from 9,777 users and existing firms’ generated content in the MIUI community and examines the impact of firms’ feedbacks on this LSM. The results show that the firms’ feedbacks frequency increased the LSM, but the firms’ feedbacks text length decreased the LSM. In addition, users’ textual sentiment and the published text length moderate the impact of firms’ feedbacks (e.g., frequency, text length) on LSM. Specifically, the users’ textual sentiment valence increases the positive effect of firms’ feedbacks frequency and weakens the negative effect of firms’ feedbacks text length on LSM. The users’ produced content text length reduced the positive effect of firms’ feedbacks frequency and offset the negative effect of the firms’ feedbacks text length on LSM. Further, the effects above are significant for the relatively active users but not for the inactive ones. Based on communication accommodation theory, this paper investigates the impact of firms’ feedbacks frequency and text length on subsequent users’ posting behaviors, providing an essential reference for guiding firms’ virtual brand community management.

The Novel of (Nessyane.com) (The Art of Forgetting) An Analytical Study

Ahlem Mosteghanemi has tried to change her style of writing a little to move towards another certain style of writing in order to make women and men heroes in Nessyane.com series. The writer has taken this expression as a slogan for this novel" Love him as no woman has loved and forget him like a man forgets". In a manner of speaking, this novel is a series similar to advice, presented by Ahlam Mosteghanemi to every female who wanted to get rid of the man’s tyranny, presenting with this a set of examples she took from her surroundings and from her female friends who lived through the ardor of love, the pain of separation and hard to forget. The woman is stronger than that, so the silence of the man is one of the most powerful means that destroy the emotional cells and tissues of the female feelings. The linguistic style has been featured by a special linguistic structure and distinct terms. Once the book is opened, the novel's motto comes first on the cover, and despite its warning reference to all men that it is banned from sale to men, Nessyan.com is not limited to women, but men are an essential party in that because the forgetfulness as a concept is related to human memory, whether for males or females. Nessyan.com or forgetfulness was not only what Ahlam wanted to present as a message to those who wanted to forget, but the purpose of Nessyan.com is freedom and emancipation from the bondage of memory towards the desired freedom.

The identity of social impact venture capitalists: exploring social linguistic positioning and linguistic distinctiveness through text mining

Impact investing is gaining momentum as an investment practice that optimizes both financial and social outcomes. However, the market is still in its emerging stage, and there is ambiguity regarding the definition of players and practices. In this paper, we adopt an investor identity perspective and use a linguistic approach to explore how social impact venture capitalists (SIVCs) communicate their identities and actions to their external stakeholders. Through a text mining analysis of the websites of 195 investors worldwide, our results reveal four types of investors who differ in terms of their social linguistic positioning and linguistic distinctiveness. Finally, by training a tree boosting machine learning model, we assess the extent to which the use of different linguistic styles is associated with website traffic.

Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants

Commentary on the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants

DREAM AND LOVE IN EDGAR ALLAN POE’S POEMS: A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM AND ANNABEL LEE

This paper studies Edgar Allan Poe's two poems; A Dream within a Dream and Annabel Lee, from a stylistic perspective. These two poems describe the desperation and hope to stay in love while they applied linguistic deviation as the medium to raise the aesthetical emotion. The aesthetical emotion within these two poems came after the linguistic level and style markers used within the poems. Therefore, this paper intended to uncover the meaning of those two poems from linguistic deviation and style markers used from the stylistic perspective. The data for this paper were collected from both poems and analysed with the qualitative description approach. This paper found that the linguistic deviation in these poems can express the aesthetic emotion the author intended to convey about the dream to love.

Understanding the Message and Formulation of Fake Online Reviews: A Language-production Model Perspective

Consumers have become ever more reliant on online reviews. Therefore, fake reviews have also become increasingly rampant and eroded online review platforms’ credibility. Previous literature suggests that particular linguistic styles can manifest in fake reviews with reference to the varying stages of the language-production process. Drawing on the language-production model as our theoretical foundation, we examine the psycholinguistic styles of fake online reviews at the message and formulation level. We performed a computational linguistic analysis on 66,940 reviews from Yelp. Our results suggest that fake reviews align more with deceptive writing in terms of the message-level variables such as length and psychological (affective, cognitive, social, and perceptual) cues. Interestingly, we found that they align less with deceptive writing in terms of the formulation-level variables such as readability, pronouns, and part-of-speech tags, which may be due to the fake review writers’ conscious attempt to follow the language styles that genuine reviews adopt.

English Learning Styles Between Korean and Mongolian Students

Although English has been required to be taught from primary school to university in South Korea and Mongolia, students can be still struggle with English. The purpose of the study was to identify the English learning strategies, styles, and preferences of Korean and Mongolian university students based on their different cultural awareness and linguistic backgrounds. The study was conducted through a research questionnaire based on different questions, designed for the needs of the research. Thus, the paper concerned the importance of learning English and even the problems, regarding students` learning styles, individual learning platforms, and linkages between the two countries.
 The paper also discussed the present situation in English education by exploring the fields of the study, learning difficulties, and methods. As a result, the study found the differences and similarities between students` usage of online platforms for their own unsupervised or unguided learning. Comparisons were made with regard to the students’ gender, age, learning styles, and other strategies. Our findings also revealed that not only teaching and learning strategies but also face-to-face communication and education systems can be important issues depending on students` linguistic background and learning style preferences.

Stylistics Literature in Qashidah Burdah by Imam Abu Abdillah bin Sa’id Al-Bushiry

Qashidah burdah is rich in linguistic style and content, however it is regrettable that many readers simply read without experiencing the beauty of language and the depth of meaning. Stylistic analysis may be used to examine the usage of linguistic style in literature and its consequences for meaning. The goal of this research is to define the components that influence the stylistics and linguistic style of qashidah burdah. To accomplish this purpose, a form of qualitative study using a content analysis technique was applied. According to the findings of the phonological analysis of qashidah burdah chapters 9 and 10, sawamit (consonant), sawait (vowel), and qafiyah (verse) were evaluated from a phonological aspect; As for the lexical aspect, there are 7 pairs of words at-Taraduf (synonyms) and a pair of adh-Dhiddhu (antonyms); From the grammatical aspect there is taqdim ta'khir and from the morphological aspect there is Ikhtiyar al-Sighah, al-'Uduul bi al-Sighah 'an al-Asl al-Siyaqi, Al-idmar fi maudi', and al-Izdiwaajiyah; from the aspect of language style there are assonance, alliteration, anastrophe, apostrophe, polysyndeton, ellipsis, and euphemism; and aspect of rhetoric there is simile, metaphor, epithet, synecdoche, irony, and personification..

The Study on Transitivity of Scientific Fiction: The Time Machine as an Example

Corpus as a tool has been introduced in literature and linguistics for many years, allowing linguistic features and authorial style more visible and appreciable to readers. Based on Biber’s MD/MF method and semantic field, this research is interested in linguistic features of science fiction and finds that transitivity is what makes science fiction distinguishable from science articles and novels. The current research is corpus-based, and corpora included in this research consist of Silence Spring (science article), The Time Machine (science fiction), and Jane Eyre (romance novel). This paper takes aims to investigate the 'transitivity' of science fiction by comparing three novels of different types. By means of the MD/MF method, the paper has found that transitivity in science fiction is achieved by TTR, mean word length, and mean sentence length. These findings may direct potential writers to focus on linguistic features worthy of notice, and readers can have a better understanding when they are reading novels.

Are users attracted by playlist titles and covers? Understanding playlist selection behavior on a music streaming platform

Playlists have become the main entry point for users to obtain music resources. This study aimed to investigate the features of playlist titles and covers that attract users and the consequences of playlist selection on music streaming platforms. In this study, 7,606 playlist data were collected from the NetEase Cloud Music platform. The linguistic style of playlist titles was classified based on the language expectancy theory (LET). Artificial intelligence technology was used to recognize and classify the image style of playlist covers according to the content of image features. We then employed hierarchical multiple linear regression and grouping regression to study the moderating effects of playlist features (linguistic style of titles and image style of covers) on the relationship between the number of playlist comments and the number of plays. The findings revealed that (1) the number of playlist comments (comment-count) has a stronger positive relationship with the number of plays (play-count) when the linguistic style of titles, such as concrete, perceptual, interactive, and social languages, appears more frequently and (2) the image style of playlist covers, such as natural, non-natural, painting and text, and portrait images, strengthens the relationships between playlist comment-count and linguistic style of playlist titles on play-count.

The Impact of Linguistic Complexity on Leadership in Online Q&A communities: Comparing Knowledge Shaping and Knowledge Adding

Understanding how to enhance online leadership in online Q&A communities is important because an online leader plays a role model or knowledge coordinator who can strengthen member commitment in the community. Considering the essential role of communication in establishing leadership, this study aims to understand how the linguistic complexity of two types of knowledge contribution, i.e., knowledge adding (KA) versus knowledge shaping (KS) that are targeted at two types of audience, may influence leadership in online Q&A communities. By analyzing the posting history of members from StackExchange, a massive network of online Q&A communities, our findings suggest that among the three linguistic complexity dimensions, readability and lexical diversity of KA have more positive impacts on online leadership than those of KS. However, the sentiment of KS has a more positive impact than the sentiment of KA. This study contributes to the online leadership research by highlighting the importance of adjusting linguistic styles based on types of communication behaviors (i.e., KA and KS) to earn leadership.

The linguistic characterisation of Galdós’s characters in his last play, Santa Juana de Castilla

AbstractIn this work I propose to examine the linguistic characterisation of the characters in Galdós’s last play, Santa Juana de Castilla (Saint Joanna of Castile, 1918). The analysis will show that in addition to the use of archaic language, the purpose of which may be to evoke the era, the linguistic style of the play is characterised by the use of colloquial forms or those that replicate spontaneous oral conversation. The oral and the colloquial contribute to the modernity of the work and also seem to be a kind of implicit criticism of the melodramatic elements of the drama. The linguistic style seen in the work is coherent with its interpretation as a reflection on the history of Spain and its future, and as a final synthesis of Galdosian thought. The analysis also reveals that Galdós upheld his intention to revitalise literary language through the spoken word until the very end.

Academic Performance in Distance Education: Quizzes as a Moderator Variable and Students’ Perception and Expectation through Linguistic Analysis

This study sheds light on the relation between assessment modalities and student behavior through linguistics styles, and academic performance. First, we examine the effect of assessment modalities (self-evaluation quizzes and summative quizzes) on academic performance. Using two modalities of online quizzes, we mainly focus on the student participation, student behavior (the work pacing and time management), type of assessment, and student characteristics. Second, we analyze the student behavior through linguistic styles and third, we examine the levels of anxiety and the expectation of success during the course. Specifically, we compare the linguistic styles of high performing students and low performing students and changes in anxiety levels and expectation of success. Methodologically, this study includes a static and dynamic perspective and combines quantitative analysis with a qualitative approach. The participants are students enrolled in Managerial Accounting for Tourism course in the academic year 2019–2020. The results show that both quizzes modalities are positively associated with academic performance. The linguistic analysis shows differences in the language between high performing students and low performing students. Finally, a pattern of changes on the students’ expectations of success and levels of anxiety are identified during the course.

The Language of Compassion: Hospital Chaplains’ Compassion Capacity Reduces Patient Depression via Other-Oriented, Inclusive Language

ObjectivesAlthough hospital chaplains play a critical role in delivering emotional and spiritual care to a broad range of both religious and non-religious patients, there is remarkably little research on the best practices or “active ingredients” of chaplain spiritual consults. Here, we examined how chaplains’ compassion capacity was associated with their linguistic behavior with hospitalized inpatients, and how their language in turn related to patient outcomes.MethodsHospital chaplains (n = 16) completed self-report measures that together were operationalized as self-reported “compassion capacity.” Next, chaplains conducted consultations with inpatients (n = 101) in five hospitals. Consultations were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC). We used exploratory structural equation modeling to identify associations between chaplain-reported compassion capacity, chaplain linguistic behavior, and patient depression after the consultation.ResultsWe found that compassion capacity was significantly associated with chaplains’ LIWC clout scores, a variable that reflects a confident leadership, inclusive, and other-oriented linguistic style. Clout scores, in turn, were negatively associated with patient depression levels controlling for pre-consult distress, indicating that patients seen by chaplains displaying high levels of clout had lower levels of depression after the consultation. Compassion capacity exerted a statistically significant indirect effect on patient depression via increased clout language.ConclusionsThese findings inform our understanding of the linguistic patterns underlying compassionate and effective chaplain-patient consultations and contribute to a deeper understanding of the skillful means by which compassion may be manifest to reduce suffering and enhance well-being in individuals at their most vulnerable.