%0 Journal Article %1 Lester2011 %A Lester, David %A Mcswain, Stephanie %D 2011 %J Psychological Reports %K MTM16 Poesía Poetry SylviaPlath %N 1 %P 73--76 %T a Text Analysis of the Poems of Sylvia Plath %V 109 %X Changes in the words used in the poems of Sylvia Plath were ex-amined using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, a computer program for analyzing the content of texts. Major changes in the content of her poems were observed over the course of Plath's career, as well as in the final year of her life. As the time of her suicide came closer, words expressing positive emotions became more frequent, while words concerned with causation and insight became less frequent. Documents left by suicides have long been used to try to obtain some understanding of their motivation, including suicide notes (e.g., Leen-aars, 1988) and diaries (e.g., Lester, 2004). In their analysis of the diary of a young woman who committed suicide, Pennebaker and Stone (2004) reported changes over time. Surprisingly, Katie, the pseudonym of the young woman, used more positive emotions as the time of her suicide drew closer. She also made fewer self-references, more references to re-ligion, and fewer references to death. In the present paper, whether this type of analysis could be extended to poems was explored. Sylvia Path, an American poet, committed suicide in England on Feb-ruary 11, 1963. Here, her poems are analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), a computer program devised by Pennebaker, Francis, and Booth (2001) for analyzing texts word by word for 74 lan-guage variables. For example, the program counts pronouns (such as " I, " " me, " and " us "), words reflecting positive and negative emotions, and particular words such as words related to death and religion. The content is expressed as percentages. In The Collected Poems (Plath, 1981), the poems are organized by the date of writing. For this analysis, the selection of 50 " juvenilia " poems was discarded. The remaining 224 poems, written in 1956 to 1963, were labeled by the year of writing. Pearson correlations over time were carried out for all 224 poems, for the 69 poems written in 1962 and 1963 in sequence, and for the 12 poems written during the last month of her life in 1963 (January 28 to February 5) in sequence. In addition, the poems written in 1962 were compared by means of t tests with those written in 1963. The results are shown in Table 1. It should be noted that the dates of publication and the dates noted for individual poems may not reflect the exact date on which the poems were written.

@article{Lester2011, abstract = {Changes in the words used in the poems of Sylvia Plath were ex-amined using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, a computer program for analyzing the content of texts. Major changes in the content of her poems were observed over the course of Plath's career, as well as in the final year of her life. As the time of her suicide came closer, words expressing positive emotions became more frequent, while words concerned with causation and insight became less frequent. Documents left by suicides have long been used to try to obtain some understanding of their motivation, including suicide notes (e.g., Leen-aars, 1988) and diaries (e.g., Lester, 2004). In their analysis of the diary of a young woman who committed suicide, Pennebaker and Stone (2004) reported changes over time. Surprisingly, Katie, the pseudonym of the young woman, used more positive emotions as the time of her suicide drew closer. She also made fewer self-references, more references to re-ligion, and fewer references to death. In the present paper, whether this type of analysis could be extended to poems was explored. Sylvia Path, an American poet, committed suicide in England on Feb-ruary 11, 1963. Here, her poems are analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), a computer program devised by Pennebaker, Francis, and Booth (2001) for analyzing texts word by word for 74 lan-guage variables. For example, the program counts pronouns (such as " I, " " me, " and " us "), words reflecting positive and negative emotions, and particular words such as words related to death and religion. The content is expressed as percentages. In The Collected Poems (Plath, 1981), the poems are organized by the date of writing. For this analysis, the selection of 50 " juvenilia " poems was discarded. The remaining 224 poems, written in 1956 to 1963, were labeled by the year of writing. Pearson correlations over time were carried out for all 224 poems, for the 69 poems written in 1962 and 1963 in sequence, and for the 12 poems written during the last month of her life in 1963 (January 28 to February 5) in sequence. In addition, the poems written in 1962 were compared by means of t tests with those written in 1963. The results are shown in Table 1. It should be noted that the dates of publication and the dates noted for individual poems may not reflect the exact date on which the poems were written.}, added-at = {2017-01-16T16:50:45.000+0100}, author = {Lester, David and Mcswain, Stephanie}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2cbb9750560e4b3fcda6f9444a34a42f7/nereaev}, file = {:C$\backslash$:/Users/Nerea/Desktop/TRABAJO ASP TEORICOS/09{\%}2E12{\%}2E28{\%}2Epr0{\%}2E109{\%}2E4{\%}2E73-76.pdf:pdf}, interhash = {a213f1dca02031e824c038f4aea62c86}, intrahash = {cbb9750560e4b3fcda6f9444a34a42f7}, journal = {Psychological Reports}, keywords = {MTM16 Poesía Poetry SylviaPlath}, mendeley-tags = {MTM16,Poes{\'{i}}a,Poetry,SylviaPlath}, number = 1, pages = {73--76}, timestamp = {2017-01-17T19:21:59.000+0100}, title = {a Text Analysis of the Poems of Sylvia Plath}, volume = 109, year = 2011 }