Celebrating Thirty Years of the JLSP

Abstract

The Journal of Language and Social Psychology has been publishing articles for 30 years. In this article, three different kinds of analyses (viz., content codings, word clouds, and a textual procedure) examining trends over and between the three decades are reported. Drawing on these, future directions for the journal and the field in general are anticipated and proposed. Keywords social psychology of language, textual analysis, word clouds At this point in time and given the journal's substantive history, we felt it important to take stock of what patterns and trends that have emerged over the 30-year history of the journal, and with a view to identifying directions for the next decade and beyond. Toward that end, three different kinds of analyses of the past 30 years' of JLSP's content were undertaken. In the sections that follow, we present the results and discuss their implications for JLSP and for the field of language and social psychology more broadly.

Emotional disclosure on social networking sites: The role of network structure and psychological needs

“…Past research has emphasized the importance of understanding communication behaviors and their associated psychological processes by studying how communicative contexts influence individuals' communication styles (Culnan & Markus, 1987;Gasiorek et al, 2012;Walther, 1992Walther, , 2012Yzer & Southwell, 2008). Our study contributes to existing research by showing that social network size and density are associated with different psychological needs and lead to different emotional disclosure patterns.…”

“…The publicness, non-directness, and mixture of social circles make Facebook a complex social environment (Bazarova, Taft, Choi, & Cosley, 2013). As research has long recognized that communicative contexts can influence communication style (Culnan & Markus, 1987;Gasiorek, Giles, Holtgraves, & Robbins, 2012;Walther, 1992Walther, , 2012, it is likely that users' social network structure on Facebook will influence their emotional disclosure.…”

Uncovering Research Opportunities in the Medical Informatics Field: A Quantitative Content Analysis

“…Our chosen data analysis method, centering resonance analysis, is purported to be a useful tool for analyzing large amounts of textual content [Gasiorek, Giles, Holtgraves and Robbins, 2012;Willis and Miertschin, 2010]. Centering resonance analysis is a means of text analysis based on noun phrases and has been used in studies across a variety of academic disciplines [Canary and Jennings, 2008;McLaren and Manatsa, 2011;Papacharissi and de Fatima Olivera, 2012;Rossetti, Handfield and Dooley, 2011].…”

Intercultural Accommodation: Accommodating Communication To People Of Different Groups

“…Humans naturally change the way they speak around the world because of the new environment they are in or the type of people with whom they surround themselves so that they, possibly as outside speakers, can blend in with the rest of their host society. CAT essentially explains how and why speakers make changes based on another speaker's behavior or perceived group belonging and how those changes in speaking are perceived (Gasiorek & Giles, 2012). When accommodating to ones' communication, speakers adjust their speaking behavior based on how they see someone else.…”

“…Divergence can best be defined as speakers moving away from the communication style of the other speaker through a desire to be separate from the other communicator (Gasiorek & Giles, 2012). Speakers that diverge may wish to disengage from another speaker for several reasons such as simply wishing to speak and treat everyone similarly.…”