The idiolect triad

Speaker: Julija Danu

Titile : The idiolect triad: explorations of individual language use across discourse types and personality traits

Authorship analysis studies generally rely on the concept of idiolect and the assumptions that individual language use is distinctive enough to discriminate it from other individuals, and consistent enough across texts of the same individuals. Yet, despite some acknowledgment of situational factors (e.g., topics, modes of production, genres) posing considerable issues in authorship analysis with implications for forensic casework, the distinctiveness and stability of language use across situations is scarcely researched. Likewise, linguistic research has rarely explored the associations between language and personality, and the existing dominant approaches from other fields are rarely linguistically focused and can lead to misconceptions and misuse in language-based personality profiling.

This talk will present some of the main findings from a recently completed PhD project, which was focused on two major themes: the nature of individual language use across situations, and the links between personality and patterns of language use. First, a unique multi-discourse dataset with additional personality data (including the HEXACO and Dark Tetrad traits) will be introduced, along with plausible options for conceptualizing and measuring distinctiveness and stability of language use, and for exploring personality differences expressed in language through a more context-sensitive approach. This will be followed by a presentation of the key findings from three studies, offering some novel conceptualizations and insights for language variation, language and personality, and authorship research.