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Linguistic Style Matching in Social Interaction

The University of Texas at Austin

James W. Pennebaker

The University of Texas at Austin, Pennebaker{at}psy.utexas.edu

Three experiments were conducted to determine the psychometric properties of language in dyadic interactions. Using text-analysis, it was possible to assess the degree to which people coordinate their word use in natural conversations. In Experiments 1 (n = 130) and 2 (n = 32), college students interacted in dyadic conversations in laboratory-based private Internet chat rooms. Experiment 3 analyzed the official transcripts of the Watergate tapes involving the dyadic interactions between President Richard Nixon and his aids H. R. Haldeman, John Erlichman, & John Dean. The results of the three studies offer substantial evidence that individuals in dyadic interactions exhibit linguistic style matching (LSM) on both the conversation level as well as on a turn-by-turn level. Furthermore, LSM is unrelated to ratings of the quality of the interaction by both participants and judges. We propose that a coordination-engagement hypothesis is a better description of linguistic behaviors than the coordination-rapport hypothesis that has been proposed in the nonverbal literature.

Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 4, 337-360 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/026192702237953


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