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"Drowning in negativism, self-hate,

doubt, madness": Linguistic insights
into Sylvia Plath’s experience of
depre...
Zsófia Demjén

Communication & Medicine 11(1): 41-54

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Communication & Medicine
Volume 11(1) (2014), 41–54
Copyright © Equinox Publishing Ltd
Sheffield
http://equinoxpub.com
DOI: 10.1558/cam.v11i1.18478
Drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness: Linguistic insights into Sylvia
Plath’s experience of depression
ZSÓFIA DEMJÉN
he Open University, UK
Abstract
his paper demonstrates how a range of lin-
guistic methods can be harnessed in pursuit of
a deeper understanding of the ‘lived experience’
of psychological disorders. It argues that such
methods should be applied more in medical
contexts, especially in medical humanities. Key
extracts from he Unabridged Journals of Sylvia
Plath are examined, as a case study of the expe-
rience of depression.
Combinations of qualitative and quantitative
linguistic methods, and inter- and intra-textual
comparisons are used to consider distinctive pat-
terns in the use of metaphor, personal pronouns
and (the semantics of) verbs, as well as other rele-
vant aspects of language. Qualitative techniques
provide in-depth insights, while quantitative cor-
pus methods make the analyses more robust and
ensure the breadth necessary to gain insights into
the individual experience.
Depression emerges as a highly complex and
sometimes potentially contradictory experience
for Plath, involving both a sense of apathy and
inner turmoil. It involves a sense of a split self,
trapped in a state that one cannot overcome,
and intense self-focus, a turning in on oneself
and a view of the world that is both more nega-
tive and more polarized than the norm. It is ar-
gued that a linguistic approach is useful beyond
this specific case.
Keywords: corpus; depression; linguistics; medi-
cal humanities; metaphor; personal narratives
1. Introduction
In recent years, the value of first-hand accounts of
illness experiences has increasingly been recog-
nized (e.g. Greenhalgh and Hurwitz 1999), with
studies showing that understanding a patient’s
view of their illness can lead to better health-
care and improved health outcomes (Kaptein
et al. 2011). his ‘narrative turn’ (Charon 2006)
can be seen as a reaction against the positivist,
biomedical paradigms of some medical profes-
sions (Roberts and Sarangi 2003; Crawford et al.
2014). Linguistic analysis, broadly speaking, has
been among the more recent approaches taken
to different physical and mental health contexts
and problems such as doctor–patient interactions
(Drew et al. 2000; Roberts et al. 2005), Alzheimer’s
disease (Hamilton 2008; Ramanathan 2010),
breast cancer, diabetes, autism (Ramanathan
2010), depression (Harvey et al. 2008; Charteris-
Black 2012), genetic counselling (Sarangi 2013)
and end of life care (Semino et al. 2014).
his prevalence of linguistic studies is no acci-
dent. Since various aspects of illness, and illness
narratives in particular, are mediated through
language, linguistic analysis can offer valuable
insights into what being ill feels like (Sarangi
2004; Flynn 2010; Hunt and Carter 2012). he
linguistic choices people make – how they say
what they say – provide clues about the nature
of their perceptions, experiences, attitudes and
sense of self beyond the content of their propo-
sitions (Gumperz 1999). Equally importantly,
as the combination of methods below hopes
42 Zsófia Demjén
to demonstrate, linguistic analyses can provide
these clues in systematic, rigorous and empirical
ways (Jeffries and McIntyre 2010), which cannot
always be said of narrative approaches (Harvey
and Koteyko 2013; cf. Atkinson and Delamont
2006). In this way, linguistic explorations of lived
experience accounts can help bridge the gap
between the sometimes differing epistemologies
of linguists and medical professionals (Roberts
and Sarangi 2003; Crawford et al. 2014). Finally,
since language both reflects and influences
reality, linguistic approaches can open up new
avenues for intervention in healthcare contexts
(cf. Charteris-Black 2012; Tay 2012) in addition
to providing tools for analysis.
his paper uses he Unabridged Journals of
Sylvia Plath (Plath 2000) as a testing ground to
demonstrate how a combination of qualitative
and quantitative linguistic analyses can lead to
a deeper understanding of the ‘lived experience’
(van Manen 1997) of mental illnesses such as
depression.
After an introduction to the data and relevant
studies of the language of depression, I qualita-
tively explore Plath’s use of metaphor, focusing on
persistent patterns. I then look at her use of the
second-person pronoun ‘you’ for self-reference.
In the final analytic section, I present statistically
significant differences between Plath’s language
and appropriate norms in terms of dichotomous
structures, pronouns, self-references, verb types
and negation, to complement the qualitative
findings. Each section begins with an introduc-
tion to the relevant linguistic techniques, includ-
ing methods, and is followed by a discussion of
findings.
1.1. he language of depression
Since mental health problems represent the
largest cause of disability and almost half of
all adults experience at least one depressive
episode in their lifetime in the UK (Department
of Health 2011), a focus on narratives of mental
illnesses such as depression seems particularly
pressing. he analysis here builds on a number
of studies investigating language and depres-
sion, but argues for (and demonstrates) a more
comprehensive approach.
Pennebaker and colleagues, having developed
their own quantitative tools for language analysis
from a social psychology perspective – LIWC1
– demonstrated that the use of function words
(grammatical words/particles) is indicative of
personality traits and mental states. Stirman and
Pennebaker (2001), Rude et al. (2004) and Bad-
deley et al. (2011), for example, linked the relative
frequency of first-person singular pronouns to
depression and potential suicidal ideation. Rude
et al. (2004), investigating the written language
of depressed, depression vulnerable (formerly
depressed) and never-depressed college students,
found that the first-person singular pronoun was
used significantly more frequently both by cur-
rently and formerly depressed students, than by
those who had never been depressed. Stirman
and Pennebaker (2001) found that poets with
suicidal tendencies used more first-person sin-
gular references, combined with more references
to death, than did non-suicidal poets. In a case
study, Baddeley et al. (2011) additionally noted
an association between suicidal ideation and
an increase in negative emotion words. hese
were taken as indicators of a decreased interest
in social relationships coupled with increased
focus on the self and death.
Again using the LIWC tool, Fekete (2002)
investigated language use on three online
self-help newsgroups for suicidal, depressive
and anxious people. He also found self-focus
to be indicative of depression, together with
feeling expressions (‘like’–‘dislike’, ‘pleasure’–
‘displeasure’, ‘attraction’–‘aversion’) and adver-
bial intensifiers, increased use of polarized
expressions (‘allness’ terms: ‘always’, ‘never’,
‘forever’, etc.) and frequent use of explainers
and retractors (e.g. ‘but’, ‘however’, ‘although’,
‘except’). he suicidal group was characterized
by similar patterns, but fewer explainers and
a frequent use of negation. Although the link
between self-focus and depression (and related
disorders) seems to be strong, Hargitai et al.
(2007) note that the content of the texts ana-
lysed also potentially influences these frequen-
cies: in narratives of achievement, self-focus
may indicate self-control and autonomy, instead
of depression.
 Linguistic insights into Sylvia Plath’s experience of depression
hese studies are innovative and exciting
in many ways, but there are some limitations
inherent in the methodology used. Computer
programs in general cannot handle certain
aspects of language use, such as context, irony
and metaphor, and LIWC in particular relies on
a limited static dictionary that may not account
for all linguistic features of a text. A combina-
tion of quantitative and qualitative linguistic
approaches is necessary for a comprehensive
account. Among the more qualitative linguistic
approaches to depression are interesting studies
of metaphor in published diaries (McMullen
and Conway 2002; Schoeneman et al. 2004;
Kiehl 2005; Demjén 2011a) and interviews with
depression sufferers (McMullen and Conway
2002; Charteris-Black 2012).
Examples of common metaphors for depres-
sion identified by these studies include ‘physical
pain and illness’ (Schoeneman et al. 2004; Harvey
2013), ‘darkness’, ‘descent’, ‘a bounded space’
that is unpleasant and/or difficult to get out of
(McMullen and Conway 2002; Charteris-Black
2012) and depression ‘as a captor’ (e.g. ‘when
I get depressed, I just am immobilized’; ‘I feel
trapped’). he latter metaphors are also noted
in Harvey’s (2013) study of two million words
of electronic communications on healthcare by
adolescents. He combined quantitative corpus
tools with qualitative analysis to find out how
adolescents describe their (feelings of ) depres-
sion and found that severity and permanence
of the state could be indicated by the difference
between ‘I am depressed’ and ‘I have depres-
sion’ and that metaphors of ‘force’, ‘isolation’ and
‘incarceration’ are commonly associated with
depression.
his paper draws from a similarly eclectic
linguistic toolkit to show how quantitative
linguistic analyses/methods can (and should)
be combined with qualitative techniques to
provide (1) analyses that are more robust and
(2) linguistically grounded explanations for the
significance of certain linguistic features being
associated with illnesses such as depression. In
this way, this paper hopes to promote linguistic
analysis as a systematic approach to getting the
most out of patients’ stories.
43
1.2. Data: Sylvia Plath’s journals and
depression
Sylvia Plath was a writer and poet. She was born
in 1932 in the United States, and later lived in
the UK and married the British poet Ted Hughes.
She published a novel, two major collections of
poetry and a collection of short stories, though
her oeuvre is sometimes overshadowed by – or
at least interpreted in light of – the documented
mental health problems she suffered from her
late teenage years onwards. Plath was diagnosed
with depression2 and attempted suicide at least
once, before succeeding in 1963 (Kirk 2004;
Cooper 2003).
he Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
consists of eight journals and 15 fragments, and
much of the original formatting as possible has
been retained (Brain 2006). Of the eight journals,
only the first one, written between 1950 and
1953 (Plath 2000: 3–187), is used to demonstrate
linguistic analysis in this paper. It spans the years
Plath spent at Smith College, and is henceforth
referred to as the Smith Journal or Journal. he
Smith Journal consists of 152 entries appropri-
ate for analysis, of varying lengths (about 25 to
around 3,000 words) and amounting to approxi-
mately 77,900 words. his excludes entries that
are either draft poems or letters. Individual
entries are mostly numbered (1–186) and
sometimes dated. he Journal appears to have
been written with relative regularity – reflecting
positive and negative experiences, emotions and
states – and encompasses a contained period of
Plath’s life leading up to her first suicide attempt.
While I find attempts to interpret Sylvia
Plath’s creative output through the skewed
lens of her personal tragedy frustrating, her
personal journals can undoubtedly be seen as
enlightening with regard to what it was like to
be, among other facets, a person with depres-
sive and suicidal tendencies. At the same time,
it has to be acknowledged that Plath’s Journal
can only be considered a personal illness narra-
tive to a limited extent: a self-aware artist such
as Plath may have intended her journals to be
published. However, journals, by virtue of often
being written temporally close to the events they
describe, are less likely to be refined/revised
44 Zsófia Demjén
than, for example, autobiographies. Plath did
not provide excessive detail for the benefit of
a potential external reader, often making it dif-
ficult to follow her narrative. In 1950–1953, she
could also not yet be described as a ‘professional’
writer. Finally, while self-construction may be a
part of journal writing, it is almost impossible
not to put some of one’s true self on the page.
Anaïs Nin, another published writer and diarist,
is very clear about this: ‘my genuine self was in
the diary’ (1975: 52).
Nevertheless, Plath is admittedly an excep-
tional case: highly articulate and always keen to
play with language, her linguistic choices may not
be representative of others with similar experi-
ences. At the same time, Plath’s verbal skills
are potentially also the greatest advantage in
studying her writing: she may have been able to
express what others cannot (Jamison 2006) and
her status as a prominent writer means that the
language of her experience may influence how
some perceive their own experiences. In this
way, although the Smith Journal is the voice of
just one person, it may represent and influence
many others.
I now turn to a series of linguistic explorations
– metaphor, pronouns and corpus linguistic
insights – on Plath’s lived experience as pre-
sented in the Journal. his is not intended as an
exhaustive analysis, which will appear elsewhere
(Demjén forthcoming), but as an overview of
what a combination of qualitative and quantita-
tive linguistic analysis can offer in the kind of
context outlined above.
2. Manual analysis: Metaphor theory
Metaphor is ‘the phenomenon whereby we talk
and, potentially, think about something in terms
of something else’ (Semino 2008: 1). Usually, we
describe impalpable, complex, subjective, sensi-
tive and/or taboo things (the ‘topic’) in more
concrete, tangible and simple terms (the ‘vehi-
cles’, i.e. the metaphorically used expressions).
For instance, in ‘Drowning in negativism’ in the
title of this paper, ‘Drowning’ is metaphorical.
In its basic (Pragglejaz Group 2007), or literal,
meaning, it is the physical event of sinking (or
being forced) under water and dying (Macmil-
lan Dictionary Online). However, Plath uses this
concrete, physical sense to refer to her mental
state, which is arguably impalpable, complex
and subjective. Analysing persistent patterns of
vehicles and topics in the language of someone
with a mental disorder such as depression can be
indicative of how they construct and experience
their predicament, as these ‘systematic meta-
phors’ are potentially representative of underly-
ing patterns of thought (Cameron et al. 2010).
Excerpt 1 below is from Entry 154, and is
both relevant to mental states and typical of how
Plath uses metaphor to describe her emotions.
It was written on November 3, 1952 and details
frustration and despair as Plath compares herself
with the man she is dating at this particular point
(cf. ‘his mind’ below). In the cited examples the
relevant metaphorical words or phrases are in
italics.3
Excerpt 1
[... ] to feel his mind soaring, reaching, and mine
caged, crying, impotent, self-reviling, an imposter.
How to justify myself, my bold, brave humanitar-
ian faith? My world falls apart, crumbles, ‘he
center does not hold.’ here is no integrating force,
only the naked fear, the urge of self-preservation.
I am afraid, I am not solid, but hollow. I feel
behind my eyes a numb, paralyzed cavern, a pit of
hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought, I
never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself,
to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly
into the womb.
(November 3, 1952 [Entry 154], italics added
[Plath 2000: 149])
Here, metaphors describe a broadly negative
mental state that could be considered depression.
In fact, positive mental states are not referred to
metaphorically as much as negative ones in the
Smith Journal, and when they are, the metaphors
are often less complex. his in itself can suggest
that negative mental states are more intense for
Plath than positive ones (cf. Ortony and Fainsil-
ber 1987).
In the first sentence, the vehicles in italics
construct the mind as a separate self that is
upset (‘crying’), does not act when it should
(‘impotent’) and has potentially destructive
attitudes (‘self-reviling’) independent from the
 Linguistic insights into Sylvia Plath’s experience of depression
rest of the self. he mind is even talked about
as a separate person, an ‘imposter’, with con-
notations of subversion and intentional deceit.
his suggests a sense of inner split and conflict,
which is reinforced by the use of ‘mimicking’ in
the second sentence of the second paragraph.
‘Mimicking’ and ‘self-reviling’ could be seen as
bullying behaviours, directed by the self at the
self, that can be linked to conceptualizations of
attacks by an internal aggressor that are normally
associated with physical illnesses like cancer (e.g.
Sontag 1991 [1979]). More recently, these have
also been noted in connection with depression
(Harvey 2013). he contrast between these and
‘impotent’ implies that, not only conflict, but
also contradiction is involved in the experience
of this mental state: the self is unable to act, but
at the same time attacks itself.
The inability to act, in this case due to
confinement, is also evoked by Plath’s use of
‘caged’. ‘Caged’ is part of a systematic metaphor
(Cameron et al. 2010) in the Journal, together
with other vehicle terms, such as ‘prison’,
‘trapped’ and ‘sealed’, which are used in reference
to Plath’s mental state. Cages and prisons are,
by default, difficult to get out of, often unpleas-
ant and with freedom of movement restricted.
Semino (2008) and Charteris-Black (2012) note
that depression can be conceptualized as an
unpleasant space to be in, and McMullen and
Conway (2002) note that it is difficult to get out
of. Adolescents in Harvey’s (2013) study addi-
tionally write more explicitly about a sense of
‘incarceration’. In Excerpt 1, these connotations
are heightened, potentially suggesting intensity
of experience, by the juxtaposition of Plath’s
mind with ‘his’ (Plath’s boyfriend’s) mind in the
first sentence, which is free and active.
Expressions in italics in the third sentence
make reference to some aspect of the environ-
ment or the self becoming separated into parts
instead of remaining a whole. Four separate
vehicles repeat this idea (‘falls apart’, ‘crumbles’
‘does not hold’, ‘no integrating force’), including
one potentially intertextual metaphor (Zinken
2003). ‘he center does not hold’ is likely an allu-
sion to Yeats’ poem he Second Coming, where
the phrase reads ‘the centre cannot hold’. In the
excerpt, the metaphor is preceded by a reference
45
to Plath’s ‘world’ coming apart, strengthening the
allusion, as Yeats also refers to the world ending.
However, in Plath’s case it is not the entire world
that is coming apart, but only ‘hers’. Alluding
to the phrase from Yeats in this context, where
the actual world is potentially ending, elevates
Plath’s experience from a personal level to the
all-encompassing, suggesting a more intense
experience once again. Heightened intensity
is also suggested by the four-time repetition of
related vehicle terms.
hese ‘coming apart’ metaphors indicate that
the experience of depression involves a sense of
chaos and a lack of control, since Plath is unable
to stop the disintegration from happening; she
appears helpless. It is also worth noting that
of the few metaphors Plath uses to describe
positive mental states, vehicles suggesting some
form of wholeness are a significant proportion
(e.g. ‘I talked, and began to remember how I was
before, how integrated, how positive’ [Entry 155,
November 14, 1952, Plath 2000: 152] underline
added). As such, these two – ‘wholeness’ and
‘coming apart’ – can be understood as counter-
parts to one another, suggesting a comprehensive
systematic metaphor and therefore an important
clue to the nature of the depressive experience.
It appears to involve a sense of two selves, one
potentially well while the other ill, an experience
also described by William Styron in his journals
(cf. Schoeneman et al. 2004; Flynn 2010).
he second paragraph contains several lin-
guistic expressions that can be related to some
form of emptiness: ‘not solid’, ‘hollow’, ‘cavern’,
‘pit’, ‘womb’. his emptiness also involves the
contrast of something being empty that is nor-
mally expected to be full: ‘behind my eyes’ refers
to the ‘location’ normally ‘containing’ thoughts,
memories, intentions, etc. Reeves et al. (2004)
associate similar examples of ‘emptiness’ meta-
phors with suicidal ideation, which resonates
with the statement ‘I want to kill myself’ in the
final sentence of the excerpt.
Emptiness vehicles co-occur with expressions
such as ‘numb’ and ‘paralyzed’. hese express
physical states where perceptions are subdued
or non-existent (although the latter also means
not being able to move). hus depression is not
only a state where there is a lack of perceptions,
46 Zsófia Demjén
thoughts and other mental content (‘nothing-
ness’), but also a state where external stimuli are
not perceived (‘numb’). Such a decrease in sensa-
tions and perceptive powers has been associated
with the phenomenology of depression (Kiehl
2005) and in this combination, ‘emptiness’ and
‘lack of sensation’ metaphors provide a more
comprehensive sense of the depth and complex-
ity of the described experience.
Excerpt 1 also includes expressions that reflect
a movement away from somewhere: ‘escape’
and ‘crawl back’. he use of ‘escape’ implies that
some things need to be avoided, presumably as
they are difficult or a struggle. In Plath’s case,
on the numerous occasions that she desires to
‘escape’, she wants to avoid: herself, the rigid cage
of routine, action, freedom and responsibility.
McMullen and Conway (2002) and Schoeneman
et al. (2004) note that depression can be conceptu-
alized as a struggle, but in this case it seems more
like Plath sees normal aspects of life as a struggle,
which therefore needs to be moved away from.
‘Crawl back’ additionally seems to imply a sense
of resignation and exhaustion. his exhaustion
may also suggest a sense of helplessness in the
experience of Plath’s mental state.
3. Manual analysis: Pronouns
Personal pronouns in English – ‘I’, ‘you’,
‘he’/‘she’/‘it’, etc. – are ‘function’ words that refer
to people and/or things. In the simplest sense,
first-person singular pronouns – ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’,
‘mine’, ‘myself’ – refer to the speaker/writer of a
message, while second-person singular pronouns
refer to the addressee, but exclude the speaker/
writer (Quirk et al. 1985). In addition, second-
person pronouns can be used to stand for people
more generally, or used in self-reference, as the
examples below will demonstrate.
As expected, the majority of entries (75%)
in the Journal are written using first-person
pronouns. For example, ‘I went upstairs and
fell into bed after they called roll. My nerves
pained keenly’ (Entry 30, October 1950 [Plath
2000: 17]). However, just over 10% of entries
are written using the second-person pronoun
for self-address and these second-person entries
roughly coincide with significant and often nega-
tive events in Plath’s life (e.g. first experiences
of college and work, unwanted sexual contact,
and mounting tensions and pressures) (Demjén
2011b). With a key example I would like to
demonstrate and explain what such a shift in
self-address can indicate about how Plath may
have been experiencing her mental state.
Excerpt 2 is from the penultimate entry of
the Smith Journal, written on July 6, 1953. At
this point in her life, Plath had had a number of
professional achievements, but here seems to
be summing up her own personality and giving
orders to herself, trying to find the motivation
to write. Shortly after this entry (on August 24)
she tried to commit suicide and was then hos-
pitalized for psychiatric treatment. his entry is
written mainly in the present tense, and contains
vocatives (e.g. ‘you fool’) and imperatives (com-
mands/orders), the latter implying, though not
requiring, the use of ‘you’. he self-referential
second-person pronouns are in italics.
Excerpt 2
First think: here is your room – here is your life,
your mind: don't panic. Begin writing, even if it is
only rough & ununified. First, pick your market:
Journal or Discovery? Seventeen or Mlle? hen
pick a topic. hen think. If you can't think outside
yourself, you can't write. […] You fool – you are
afraid of being alone with your own mind. You
just better learn to know yourself, to make sure
decisions before it is too late. 3 months, you think,
scared to death. You want to call that man – You
earned enough money to go. Why don't you go?
Stop thinking selfishly of razors & self-wounds &
going out and ending it all.
(July 6, 1953 [No entry number]; underlines in
original, italics added [Plath 2000: 186])
here is a sense of emotional depth in this
example, as one is exposed to what seems to be
an interior monologue – though it is not really a
monologue at all. Since one of the main functions
of ‘you’ is to address someone we are speaking
to, its use for self-address suggests the presence
of two selves: the speaker and the listener or
addressee. Plath seems to be in dialogue with
herself, creating a sense of split, which bears
similarity to Plath’s ‘coming apart’ metaphors
discussed above. Imperatives, with their implied
 Linguistic insights into Sylvia Plath’s experience of depression
‘you’, additionally create a sense of urgency; com-
mands require immediate action. he fact that
commands are necessary suggests that Plath
is experiencing one half of herself as passive,
unable to do the simplest task, and the other
half of her is trying to get her going again. his
creates a sense of inner conflict which becomes
even more explicit through self-threatening (‘You
just better learn […]’). he fact that there is a shift
in narrative person at this point in the Journal
is significant because of what it might indicate
about a change in mental state (cf. Pennebaker
2011). his point is picked up again with the help
of quantitative methods below.
So far I have focused on what two linguistic
devices, as part of qualitative analysis, can reveal
about Plath’s experience of her mental state.
Such analyses provide rich and subtle insights;
however, they are difficult to generalize and in
some cases only allow for very tentative inter-
pretations. As such, I will now turn to the results
of quantitative analyses to support some of the
claims above and to present additional insights
that can only be obtained from a mixed-methods
approach.
4. Quantitative approaches
Quantitative methods in linguistics often involve
the use of corpus tools (Rayson 2008; McEnery
and Hardie 2012), which make it possible to study
large quantities of language (a corpus) through
the often automatic searching and comparing
of electronic versions of texts. In automated
methods, corpus analysis software such as
Wmatrix (Rayson 2009) or WordSmith Tools
(Scott 2004) perform statistical comparisons
between two or more corpora, or statistically
analyse the composition of one. Wmatrix, which
this analysis relies on, additionally enables auto-
matic grammatical and semantic annotation, or
‘tagging’, which means that additional metadata
is added to texts during uploading. For example,
‘went’ is tagged as a verb, in the past tense (VVD),
denoting ‘moving, coming and going’ (M1). he
metadata enables the identification of trends that
are invisible at the word level (Rayson 2008), as
variants of a word (e.g. ‘go’, ‘goes’, ‘went’) and
47
related terms (‘walk’, ‘run’, ‘wander’) are grouped
together. As a result, Wmatrix provides not only
word-by-word comparisons, but also compari-
sons in terms of grammatical (POS) and seman-
tic composition. Since the relative frequencies
of grammatical categories, including personal
pronouns, negation and polarized language (‘all’,
‘always’, ‘never’, ‘everyone’, ‘nobody’ etc.), have
been specifically shown to correlate with affec-
tive states (cf. Fekete 2002), this functionality is
invaluable.
In the sections below, I compare the language
of the Smith Journal with a baseline of linguistic
normalcy represented by a small reference corpus
of autobiographical writing (Semino and Short
2004). As personal journals are not readily avail-
able, and blogs are a similarly different genre (cf.
Rodriguez et al. 2010), this corpus provides the
best alternative frame of reference. I will discuss
some of the main statistically significant (key)
differences between the parts-of-speech (POS)
and semantic fields of the Smith Journal (77,900
words) and other autobiographical writings (see
Table 1). Such statistically significant differences
show us the ways in which Plath wrote about her
reality differently from a norm, which might be
indicative of how she experienced it differently.
he statistical measure used in these compari-
sons is log-likelihood (LL), a measure automati-
cally calculated in Wmatrix. Various critical LL
values (cut-off points) can be used as measures
of statistical significance; however, especially
for smaller-sized corpora it is important also
to take into consideration the overall frequen-
cies of words, phrases or tags. While there is
little agreement amongst scholars as to what an
appropriate cut-off point is, Rayson et al. (2004)
provide a workable framework:
• For a confidence level of 95% (p ≤ 0.05),
the LL cut-off should be 3.84 with a
• For a confidence level of 99% (p ≤ 0.01),
minimum frequency of 13
the LL cut-off should be 6.63 with a
• For a confidence level of 99.9% (p ≤
minimum frequency of 11
0.001), the LL cut-off should be 10.83
with a minimum frequency of 8
48 Zsófia Demjén

he analysis here follows these guidelines. he
LL value of 6.63 is used as the cut-off point for
significance, with a minimum frequency of 11 in
either corpus to ensure the reliability of results
(p ≤ 0.01), unless otherwise stated.
In addition to comparing the Journal with a
corpus of autobiographies, I also discuss differ-
ences between first- and second-person entries
within the Journal itself (see Table 2). his allows
me to comment not only on what is distinctive
about Plath’s language overall, but also on what
differences there might exist between her uses
of language at different points in the text. his
facilitates hypotheses about potential changes in
her experience of her mental state.
Note that, for exemplification purposes, I am
only focusing on the most relevant statistical
differences for depression (polarized language,
self-references, verb types and negation), as
established in previous studies (Stirman and
Pennebaker 2001; Fekete 2002; Hargitai et al.
2007).4
4.1. Polarized language
A significant difference between Plath’s language
and general autobiographical writing is the
relative abundance of polarized language in the
former. By polarized language (or dichotomous
structures) I mean words and expressions that
are generally used to describe the extreme ends
of clines, for example: ‘all’ and ‘nothing’; ‘always’
and ‘never’; ‘everybody’ and ‘nobody’ etc. hese
types of words are captured in Wmatrix under
the semantic categories of ‘Evaluation: good’
(LL=11.72), ‘Entire; maximum’ (LL=7.71), ‘Fre-
quent’ (LL=9.42), as well as the grammatical cat-
egory of ‘pre-determiner’ (LL=15.28) (see Table
1). he overuse of such polar opposites suggests
high contrast and intense experiences (whether
good or bad). It is as if Plath sees the world in
a very harsh light and all experiences/emotions
become intensified either towards the positive or
the negative end of a cline. he intensity outlined
here is similar to the kind noted in the discussion
of some of Plath’s metaphors (e.g. repetition and
juxtapositioning with ‘his mind’). he qualitative
and quantitative results combined provide more
substantial evidence for the intensity of Plath’s
experience of depression. his may even result in
a kind of instability and flux (due to alternation
between extremes) leading to the kind of chaos
that her ‘coming apart’ metaphors suggest. In
fact, polarized language has been associated with
the psychological defence mechanism of mental/
cognitive ‘splitting’ (Fekete 2002).
4.2. Self-references
A further set of statistically significant differ-
ences between the Smith Journal and other
autobiographical writings is somewhat surpris-
ing. In the Smith Journal, Plath makes more
references to herself using ‘I’ than is normal in
the reference corpus (LL=16.79), which also
consists of first-person narratives. She also
uses the second-person pronoun ‘you’ more
frequently. he significance of the latter was
discussed in Section 3, but the overuse of ‘I’ is
worth considering further. he excessive use of

Table 1. Selected differences between the Smith Journal and the reference corpus (POS and semantic tags combined)

Description Tag Freq. 1 %1 Freq. 2 %2 LL Example Items

Base form of lexical verb VV0 1820 2.45 481 1.17 234.49 hate, know
2nd person personal pronoun PPY 1080 1.45 243 0.59 189.52 you
1st person sing. subjective PPIS1 2410 3.24 1149 2.8 16.79 I
Personal pronoun
pre-determiner capable of DB 355 0.48 133 0.32 15.28 all
pronominal function
Evaluation: good A5.1+++ 83 0.11 21 0.05 11.72 perfect
Frequent N6+++ 95 0.13 28 0.07 9.42 always
Entire; maximum N5.1+ 502 0.68 222 0.54 7.71 all, complete
 Linguistic insights into Sylvia Plath’s experience of depression
‘I’ is a documented characteristic of depression
(Rude et al. 2004) and implies self-focus. here
seems to be an inability to distance oneself from
personal concerns (Fekete 2002). his suggests
that all experiences are interpreted as being
about the self: everything becomes personal.
Bearing in mind the aforementioned polarized
language, this can be a potentially self-defeating
combination. Negative experiences, for example,
are likely to be interpreted as more severe and as
attacks on her person rather than circumstantial.
Indeed metaphors like ‘my world falls apart’
seem to support this interpretation.
Given the importance of these pronouns for
depression, I also explored whether there was
a significant difference in frequencies between
first- and second-person entries in terms of self-
reference. Establishing this required a creative
manipulation of the data, as the words used for
self-reference (pronouns and verbs) are different
in the two types of entries: first-person pronouns
(and respective verb forms) vs second-person
pronouns. To enable comparison, the self-
referential pronouns and corresponding verbs
were changed to their first-person equivalents
in the second-person entries. For example, ‘you
are’ was changed to ‘I am’, wherever it referred
to Plath.
In fact, both the subjective and objective
pronouns (‘I’ and ‘me’ referring to Plath after the
pronouns were changed) were used significantly
more frequently in previously second-person
entries than in the rest of the Smith Journal
(LL=23.77 and LL=16.04, respectively, see Table
2). his suggests that Plath focuses even more
intensely on herself in entries written in the
second person. Potentially, then, second-person
Table 2. Selected differences between second-person entries and the rest of the Smith Journal
Description POS Freq. 1
Tag
Base form of lexical verb VV0 267
2nd/1st person sing. subjective PPIS1 379
personal pronoun
2 /1 person sing. objective
nd st
PPIO1 81
personal pronoun
Negation XX 96
49
narration may not only be an indicator of emo-
tional upheaval and a sense of split, as proposed
in the qualitative analysis, but may also be an
indicator of increasingly severe depression.
4.3. Transitivity
A further significant feature of both the Smith
Journal and second-person entries within it
was the overuse of lexical verbs (which denote
actions, activities and events) at LL=234.49
(Table 1) and LL=26.13 (Table 2). On its own
this difference is difficult to interpret; a closer
look at the verbs themselves is necessary and
one of the best tools for analysing actions, activi-
ties and events in language is the framework of
transitivity.
Essentially, transitivity is part of systemic
functional linguistics (Halliday and Matthiessen
2004) and focuses on ‘who does what to whom’.
he framework divides actions and activities
(commonly denoted by verbs) into six process
types (and associated participants): material,
mental, relational, behavioural, verbal and exis-
tential. Material processes, the most frequent in
various genres (Eggins and Martin 1997; Hussein
Norouzi et al. 2012), are normally creative or
transformative in some way: they bring entities
into existence or change existing ones through
effort and expended energy. his implies that
there are usually two participants involved: the
actor or agent and entity being acted upon (‘I
actually hugged him impulsively’ [Entry 160,
January 19, 1953, Plath 2000: 161, underline
added]). Behavioural and mental process types
generally each have only one human participant
– the sensor (‘I think I am mad at times’ [Entry
%1 Freq. %2 LL Example Items
2
3.33 1552 2.34 26.13 remember, dance, see
4.74 2375 3.58 23.77
I
1.01 400 0.6 16.04
me
1.21 619 0.93 4.86 no, not, n’t
50 Zsófia Demjén
31, No date, Plath 2000: 24, underline added]) and
behaver (‘I smiled with impersonal tenderness’
[Entry 28, No date, Plath 2000: 22, underline
added]), respectively. Relational processes denote
attributes or identities (‘what an ego I have’ [Entry
35, No date, Plath 2000: 29, underline added]);
verbal processes are to do with communicating
such as ‘say’, ‘report’, ‘ask’; and existential pro-
cesses denote existence (‘there are a few rooms
lit’ [Entry 63, No date, Plath 2000: 56, underline
added]). Individual activities can be more or less
prototypical of any of these types.
In the case of the entire Smith Journal, over
a third of these frequently used verbs denoted
mental process types such as ‘think’, ‘believe’,
‘know’, ‘hate’, ‘feel’. his could be seen as a feature
of journals, which deal with the inner world of
their writer. However, additionally about 17%
are behavioural processes (e.g. ‘stop’, ‘pull away’,
‘pretend'). Contrary to expectations, therefore,
these two process types made up over half of all
process types (instead of material processes) in
the Smith Journal. As outlined above, mental
and behavioural processes do not bring about a
change in the environment through the expend-
ing of energy and involve no external party.
Lexical verbs are also significantly more fre-
quent in second-person entries than in the rest
of the Smith Journal. While in the Smith Journal
overall, just over half of processes (where Plath
is the agent) have no effect on external things,
the percentage is around 70% in second-person
entries. his suggests increased self-focus in the
same way as the use of pronouns did and may
provide further evidence of the helplessness
noted in Plath’s metaphors of ‘emptiness’. In addi-
tion, the higher prevalence of such process types
in second-person entries when compared with
the rest of the journal also indicates a potential
change in the severity of the mental state.
4.4. Negation
A final significant difference that I would like
to discuss concerns the comparison between
second-person entries and the rest of the
Journal, which revealed an overuse of negation
in second-person entries (LL=4.86; p ≤ 0.05).5
Negation refers to words such as ‘no’, ‘not’, ‘never’,
‘nothing’ etc., that describe how a state of affairs
is not (examples in Figure 1). Negation can be
evidence of a negative outlook and a depreciation
of the world, but in combination with increased
self-references it has also been associated with
depression with a tendency towards self-harm
(Hargitai et al. 2007). Fekete (2002) additionally
noted that in combination with dichotomous
structures (among others) it can indicate suicidal
ideation.
Figure 1. Concordance of Negation in the final two entries
of the Smith Journal
hese links are important given that the final
two entries in the Smith Journal are written in
the second person and therefore are part of the
group of entries that contain increased self refer-
ences and negation (compared with the rest of
the journal). hese entries, like the rest of the
journal, also contain dichotomous structures (or
polarized language). his means that there is ten-
tative evidence of a potential for self-harm and
suicidal ideation, as suggested above by Plath’s
metaphors to do with emptiness and the womb.
Significantly, the evidence seems to compound
in the final two entries, which were written only
a few weeks before Plath’s first suicide attempt.
5. Conclusions
his paper aimed to illustrate how a range of
linguistic methods can be used to investigate
the ‘lived experience’ of depression, as a case
study. In particular, it hopes to have demon-
strated that relatively reliable interpretations
can come from a combination of qualitative and
quantitative linguistic methods, which might
help to bridge the divide between humanities
and medical approaches to health (cf. Crawford
et al. 2014).
 Linguistic insights into Sylvia Plath’s experience of depression
Manual qualitative analyses of metaphor and
personal-pronoun use highlighted the intricate
and subtle nature of Plath’s experience of depres-
sion. Plath seems to have experienced her mental
state as chaotic and at times contradictory –
impotent and in the process of self-attack at the
same time. here was a sense of confinement
and exhaustion, which suggests that the mental
state is unpleasant and difficult to overcome.
The repetition of relevant metaphors in the
Smith Journal suggests that this was a significant
aspect of Plath’s experience. Some metaphors
also suggest an absence of control and a sense
of split. he use of the second-person pronoun
to refer to the self also suggested a sense of split,
as ‘you’ was directed at the self. he series of
commands directed at the self further implied a
sense of conflict, which may be a more general
characteristic of depression, but it is less fre-
quently reported. In addition, a further possible
significance of second-person narration was
suggested by an intra-textual quantitative com-
parison. he quantitative analysis showed that
self-focus is increased in second-person entries,
providing potential quantitative evidence for a
more severe depressive state. In addition, suicidal
ideation, an interpretation tentatively suggested
for Plath’s ‘womb’ and ‘emptiness’ metaphors,
was given more substance by her statistically sig-
nificant overuse of negation and self-references
in second-person narration, especially in the
final two entries (written just before her first
suicide attempt).
Abundant dichotomous structures, as iden-
tified through corpus methods, suggested that
Plath potentially experienced the world in a more
polarized way than the average person. Certain
ways in which she used metaphors (juxtaposition
and intertextual allusion) also seemed to point to
intensity of experience. hese may be examples
of what Tay (2012) calls ‘maladaptive concep-
tualizations’, i.e. Plath’s seemingly categorical
worldview and aversion to ‘normal’ aspects
of everyday life potentially contribute to her
depression. hese attitudes could be addressed
in therapeutic contexts.
As depression is a relatively well-researched
condition, the insights I have described above
may not seem revolutionary. However, what I
51
have tried to demonstrate is that the lived expe-
rience of depression is implicit in the language
of its ‘patients’. Even with depression, linguistic
analysis can potentially enrich our understanding
of the condition. For example, it may be worth
exploring whether a sense of inner conflict and
contradiction, as outlined in both the metaphor
and the pronouns sections, is common among
sufferers of depression. Similarly, monitoring
patients’ use of pronouns and negation could
potentially function as a kind of diagnostic tool
or early warning system, highlighting individu-
als who may be at risk of moving towards more
severe depression or suicidal ideation. But more
importantly, linguistic clues can and should be
used to study mental health problems that are
less well documented.
Notes
1. See http://www.liwc.net/liwcdescription.php.
2. For the purposes of this paper, depression is
understood as ‘a profound and persistent feeling
of sadness or despair and/or a loss of interest in
things that were once pleasurable’ (Fundukian
and Wilson 2008: 339).
3. Although I only describe these key examples of
metaphor, my interpretations draw on extensive
analyses of metaphorical patterns in the Smith
Journal (Demjén forthcoming).
4. A full analysis can be found in Demjén (forthcom-
ing).
5. he LL cut-off point for Journal internal com-
parisons is lowered to 3.84 (p ≤ 0.05), as there
were fewer results at higher levels of significance.
he minimum frequency was also adjusted in
accordance with the recommendations to ≥13
(Rayson et al. 2004). his ensured the reliability
of the data, even at a lower level of LL.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Elena Semino, Srikant
Sarangi and two anonymous reviewers for their
comments on earlier versions of this paper.
52 Zsófia Demjén
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Social and Clinical Psychology 23 (3): 325–346. Zsófia Demjén is a Lecturer in English Language
http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/jscp.23.3.325.35454 and Applied Linguistics at he Open University, UK.
Scott, M. (2004) WordSmith Tools. Version Four. Her research interests include health communica-
Oxford: Oxford University Press. tion, metaphor and especially the intersections of
Semino, E. (2008) Metaphor in Discourse. Cambridge: language, mind and health(care). She is co-editor of
Cambridge University Press. the Routledge Handbook of Metaphor and Language
Semino, E., Demjén, Z. and Koller, V. (2014) ‘Good’ (forthcoming) and her most recent projects involved
and ‘bad’ deaths: Narratives and professional investigating metaphor in end of life care discourse
identities in interviews with hospice managers. and language in the representation of voices in an
Discourse Studies 16 (5): 667–685. http://dx.doi. autobiography of a schizophrenic. Address for cor-
org/10.1177/1461445614538566 respondence: Department of Applied Linguistics
Semino, E. and Short, M. (2004) Corpus Stylistics: and English Language, Faculty of Education and
Speech, Writing and hought Presentation in a Language Studies, he Open University, Stuart Hall,
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