xi, 56 p. : ill. (some col.) / To investigate resilience against combat stress, 175 interviews from the Veterans' History Project were coded using the Deployment Risk and Resiliency Inventory and analyzed using the Linguistic Inventory and Word Count. Contrary to hypotheses, higher levels of social support did not predict psychological outcomes, nor did social support differ between wars. Low variance in the social support measure likely contributed to the null results. The amount of combat experiences the veteran discussed did significantly predict psychological outcomes, replicating previous findings. This indicates that the LIWC measures are good indicators of psychological outcome. / Committee in charge: Holly Arrow, Chairperson; Jennifer Freyd, Member; Phil Fisher, Member

The primary aim of the present study is to gain an understanding of the translation process involved when translating song lyrics by investigating to what extent 10 translation features occur in a corpus of 12 song lyrics from the musicals CHESS, MAMMA MIA! and Kristina från Duvemåla. Comparing the source texts to the translated texts, taking into account: number of words, syllables vs. words, word-for-word translations, additions/omissions, metaphors, rhymes, reorganization of text, paraphrases and last if there were any untranslated English words kept in the Swedish version – led to the conclusion that the translation strategy of using paraphrases (express something written in other words) was the most common translation strategy used when translating song lyrics. In addition, translating song lyrics also requires a translator who is musical, has good association skills, a large vocabulary and is also very good at playing with words. Taking the findings into consideration it could be said that the word 'translation' should be avoided in reference to the act of transferring the song lyrics of a musical in one language into another language. More apt descriptive phrases for this process would probably be 'text arrangement' or 'interpretation'.

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How do the content and writing style of people who drink alcohol beverages stand out from non-drinkers? How much information can we learn about a person's alcohol consumption behavior by reading text that they have authored? This thesis attempts to extend the methods deployed in authorship attribution and authorship profiling research into the domain of automatically identifying the human action of drinking alcohol beverages. I examine how a psycholinguistics dictionary (the Linguistics Inquiry and Word Count lexicon, developed by James Pennebaker), together with Kenneth Burke's concept of words as symbols of human action, and James Wertsch's concept of mediated action provide a framework for analyzing meaningful data patterns from the content of blogs written by consumers of alcohol beverages. The contributions of this thesis to the research field are twofold. First, I show that it is possible to automatically identify blog posts that have content related to the consumption of alcohol beverages. And second, I provide a framework and tools to model human behavior through text analysis of blog data.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Communication, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-70).

Text in English / Abstracts in Afrikaans and English / Ekspressiewe skryfwerk (ES) – as ‘n metode van intervensie gemik op fisiese en geesteswelstand van deelnemers – word reeds vir ongeveer drie dekades ondersoek. Klein en Boals beweer met hul 2001-studie dat ES ook ‘n positiewe invloed uitoefen op die werkende geheue van individue. Met die huidige studie word die vraag of hierdie bevinding ook van toepassing is op adolessente en jong volwassenes van Suidelike Afrika ondersoek. Dié projek betrek aanvanklik skoolleerders (N = 44) en eerstejaar universiteitstudente (N = 83) in die Suid-Kaap en met die skryfoefeninge word ‘n komponent bygevoeg by een van die eksperimentele groepe waar kognitiewe insette saam met die emosionele onthulling verlang word. Die studie-resultate toon heelwat teenstrydighede, dog die positiewe invloed van ES op die werkspan word by ‘n goeie aantal eksperimentele groep deelnemers waargeneem. Vorige navorsing dui op ‘n verlaging in die voorkoms van indringer- en vermydingsgedagtes na ES tesame met verbeterde werkspan en hierdie verband word van nader beskou deur die huidige studie. Die moontlikheid dat woordtelling per minuut as informele meting van werkspan aanvaar kan word, sowel as die moontlike verband tussen gemoedsvlak en skryfkondisie word ook met die projek ondersoek. / During the past three decades expressive writing has been in the research spotlight as an effective method of intervention in the improvement of human well-being. In 2001 a study done by Klein and Boals claimed that expressive writing also has a positive influence on the working memory of the student participants. The current study investigates the influence of expressive writing on adolescents and young adults in the Southern Africa context. Solution-focused exercises, together with emotional expression during the writing sessions, add a cognitive component to the intervention which strive to create greater impact on working memory capacity (WMC). Previous research indicate that improvement in WMC goes hand in hand with the reduction in the prevalence of intrusive and avoidant thoughts. During the current project the relationship between working memory and these thoughts is investigated. Additionally the possibility of word count as informal measure for WMC are looked at as well as a possible association between mood level and writing condition. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

Since software and hardware is well available for automated text analysis and since a large data that describes real projects submitted to grant program is opened up, there is a possibility to follow phenomena of behavioral economics and psycholinguistics which evidence particularities in textual descriptions may be statistically associated with a reader's behavior or with a reader's decision-taking, which, in this case, involves an influence on final allocation of grant funds. The thesis uses forenamed areas as a starting-point and also employs quantitative indicators from the field of forensic linguistics in order to perform a computer-aided quantitative text analysis. The main goal is to evaluate from correlation perspective, if there in real operational programmes were present any associable relationships between the quantitative features of a proposed project's textual description and the amount of grant allocated to a project. The thesis is divided into four chapters, where it introduces basis, describes analyzed data and used methods, comments on made analyses and found relations, and all the performed research is summarized and evaluated in the last chapter.