Browsing by Subject "Linguistic agency"

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Smoke signals : patterns of agency assignment in smoking initiation and cessation narratives
(2017-05) Wartel, Max Aaron; McGlone, Matthew S., 1966-; Vangelisti, Anita; Ballard, Dawna; Banas, John
This research sought to describe and understand patterns of linguistic agency assignment in smoking cessation narratives. To this end, a corpus of these narratives gathered from an online twelve step cessation program, Voices of Nicotine Recovery (VONR), was constructed and an objective scheme for coding linguistic agency assignment in ex-smokers’ cessation narratives was developed. When discussing smoking and addiction, speakers have the option of linguistically assigning agency (i.e., the capacity for action) to themselves, others, inanimate objects, or to abstract concepts like addiction. Patterns of agency assignment may provide insight into conceptions of efficacy and responsibility for addictive behaviors. The author predicted patterns of linguistic agency based on the dominant disease model of addiction, cessation programs based in this model, and extant findings concerning self-efficacy and nicotine addiction. The author hypothesized that ascription of agency would vary during the stages of addiction such that personal agency would decline and non-personal and non-human agency would increase following addiction. Findings were consistent with predictions concerning increases in non-human agency following nicotine addiction relative to pre-initiation levels. However, observed patterns of agency assignment were not consistent with other predictions based in the disease model. It was also hypothesized that following the expected decrease in personal agency ascription after smoking initiation, personal agency assignment would then increase leading to cessation attempts. During quit attempts, personal agency assignment was expected to decrease before rising following successful cessation to its highest post-initiation levels. As predicted, the highest post-initiation levels of personal agency assignment were observed following cessation. However, the data were inconsistent with expected patterns of linguistic agency for other stages. These findings suggest that the study of linguistic agency in addiction narratives may contribute to an improved understanding of how addiction operates and the extent to which the disease model is predictive of the way in which recovering nicotine addicts view their addiction and cessation. Findings, implications, and additional areas of research are discussed.
Talking about torment : agency assignment and grammatical metaphor in pain communication
(2020-05-13) Wang, Yiwei (Ph. D. in communication studies); McGlone, Matthew S; Bessarabova, Elena; Donovan, Erin E; Vangelisti, Anita L
People suffering from pain often express their experience in metaphor. Empirical research suggests that the metaphors they use may shed light on their adjustment to pain conditions. While linguistic agency and pain metaphors often co-occur, no study has examined how people assign agency when describing pain and the impact of agency assignment on message receivers’ perceptions and responses. This research investigated 1) patterns of linguistic agency assignment in individuals’ descriptions of pain differing in intensity and duration, and 2) the impact of linguistic cues (i.e., agency assignment and grammatical category) used in fictitious pain narratives on audience’s pain perception. Two studies are reported. Study 1 investigated the language people spontaneously use to articulate their experience of mild vs. severe and acute vs. chronic pain. The author hypothesized that participants would be more likely to assign agency to pain or body parts where pain is localized (e.g., back) when describing chronic and/or severe pain than when describing acute and/or mild pain. As predicted, pain/body agency assignment rate was higher in the chronic vs. acute pain condition. However, there was no significant difference in the pain/body agency assignment rate between the severe and mild pain conditions. Study 2 featured a 3 (pain location: back, head, or joint) × 2 (agency assignment: person or pain/body) × 2 (pain process encoding: verb or nominalization) factorial experimental design. Participants read a pain narrative differing in linguistic cues and then rated their perception of the speaker and their pain. Findings from univariate analyses of covariance indicated that pain/body agency predicted higher ratings of perceived pain intensity and duration and lower ratings of internal locus of control and pain responsibility than human agency. However, no significant effect of agency assignment and nominalization were found on perceived pain affect, pain-related disability, sympathy, and support for higher dose. Pain perception was also subjected to individual differences in medical expertise, personal pain history, and experience of caretaking. This research offers insight to researchers and healthcare professionals about the influence of various linguistic choices in pain description on others’ interpretation of sufferers’ experience and their subsequent reactions.