A Woman’s Perspectives On Death Analyzed Through Linguistics

Abstract

Natural language use reflects an individual’s mental state and contains indicators of their emotions. Linguistic analysis allowed us to examine women’s language use to gain insight on occasionally subconscious thoughts or feelings regarding death. Death related concerns, for many individuals, are not frequently openly discussed or considered. Language use, when writing about death, reflects individual concerns about death. We performed an exploratory analysis of language usage in women when writing about their thoughts and feelings about death. We analyzed 20 documents written by women in 2019 regarding their thoughts and feelings of death using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. This exploratory analysis allowed us to examine the words women chose to use when writing about death, and gain insight regarding their mental state about death. These findings may be applied to similar future research comparing male and female differences regarding death related concerns.