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Sad Poets'Society

It may be possible to detect suicidal tendencies in poets from the words in their poems, according to a paper published in the July /August issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.

Poets who killed themselves were more self-preoccupied and isolated than a control1 group, the researchers found. There are several theories about why people kill themselves: for instance, the"social integration / disengagement"model of sociologist Emile Durkheim2, who theorized that a major cause of suicide was an individual's lack of bonding with others, and a more traditional model emphasizing the role of hopelessness and helplessness. Psychologists James Pennebaker from the University of Texas, Austin, and Shannon Wiltsey Stirman of the University of Pennsylvania used poetry to put these two to the test.

They selected nine American, Russian, and British poets, all but one from the 20 th century, who had committed suicide, and matched each with a colleague of the same sex and nationality who lived at approximately the same time. About 300 poems were analyzed by software called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, which is programmed to recognize some 70 dimensions of language, such as whether a word is a pronoun, or whether it refers to a negative emotion. The researchers tested Durkheim's integration theory by looking at references to self and others, and to communication ( words like" talk"or " alone ") . Hopelessness, they decided, would be marked by mentions of death and negative emotions.

Many of the control poets shared depression and other mood disorders with the ones that committed suicide, says Pennebacker:"Nonsuicidal poets are not a particularly optimistic group. "But a higher number of first person singular self-references in the works of the suicidal poets suggested they were more self-preoccupied and detached from others — thus backing up3 the Durkheim model. Reading over Sylvia Plath4, for example, who killed herself in 1963, " there's'I's' everywhere, " Pennebacker says. And near the poets'death, the word" we "became less common, signaling increasing isolation. " A tremendous amount of action is in the pronouns, "he says.

One finding the authors did not expect was that the suicide group used a significantly higher percentage of sexual words throughout their careers. Whether that supports either of the two theories will have to await further research, Pennebaker says.

练习题：

Ⅰ. Fill in each blank with proper phrases from the passage:

1. Durkheim believes that a major reason people kill themselves is .

2. A person would kill himself if he fell more .

3. Some words in poems are believed to communicate like .

Ⅱ. Question:

How many dimensions of a language can the software Linguistic Inquiry and Word
Count know?

参考答案

Ⅰ. 1. an individual's lack of bonding with others

2. self-preoccupied and isolated

3."talk"or"alone"

Ⅱ. 70 .

参考译文

自杀了的诗人和他们的诗

《 身心医学》杂志7 — 8月号上的一篇论文说, 也许能从诗人在诗中的用词来探出他们的自杀倾向。研究人员发现, 与对照组的诗人相比, 那些自杀了的诗人具有更多的自我观, 也更孤独。

有关人们为何自杀的理论有几种, 比如: 社会学家埃米尔· 涂尔干的“ 社会结合性和脱离性”的理论认为, 自杀的主要原因是个人缺乏与他人的联系。一个更为传统的理论则强调自杀是因为无望和无助。美国德州大学奥斯汀分校的心理学家詹姆斯· 彭尼贝克和宾夕法尼亚大学的心理学家香农· 维尔茨· 斯特曼用诗来对这两种理论进行了检验。

他们选择了来自美国、俄罗斯和英国的9 位自杀身亡的诗人, 除了其中一人以外, 都是生活在20 世纪的, 并将他们中的每一位与一个与他同性别、同时代、同国籍的同行作比较。研究人员用一个名为《语言学调查和词汇计数》的软件分析了近300 首诗, 这个软件可以识别语言的70 个方面, 如一个单词是否是代词, 或者一个词是否含有消极悲观的情绪。研究人员认为涂尔干的社会结合性理论可以通过那些表示自我和他人的词汇, 以及表示如“ 谈话”或“ 独自”等交流方面的词语来得以证实。而“ 绝望”, 他们觉得可以通过诗中提及的死亡或消极悲观情绪来表示。

许多对照组诗人和自杀了的诗人一样都有消沉和其他情绪失调症状, 彭尼贝克说:“ 没有自杀的诗人并不是特别乐观的人群。”但是, 在自杀诗人的作品中有更高频率的第一人称使用率, 由此可推测他们更倾向于自我关注以及和其他人分离, 这是对涂尔干理论的支持。

例如, 彭尼贝克说, 读1963 年自杀的诗人西尔维亚· 普拉丝的诗, 就会发现诗中“ 到处都是‘ 我’字”。在诗人生命的后期, 单词“ 我们”变得更少, 表明她的孤独感在增加。他说:“ 代词里含有大量的行动。”

研究人员的一个意外发现是, 自杀诗人在其创作生涯中使用了相当高比例的涉及性的词汇。彭尼贝克说, 这一发现是否能支持上述两种理论中的一种还有待于进一步的研究。

阅读解释

1. control n. 检查, 核对, ( 试验中的) 对照( 处理) 。这里所说的control group 指control poets, 可以翻译成“ 对照组诗人”, 也就是下文提到的nonsuicidal poets。

2. 涂尔干( 1858—1927) , 法国实证主义社会学家、法国社会学学派的奠基人, 认为劳动分工是社会团结的基础,“集体意志”在社会中具有决定性作用。主要著作《论社会分工》、《论自杀》等。

3. 支持, 为⋯⋯撑腰, 堵塞, 拦( 水) 。back down ( 放弃权利等, 撒手, 打退堂鼓, 取消前言) ;back off ( 退避, 后退) ; back on to ( 背靠着) ; back out ( of) ( 放弃某事, 取消, 扭松, 旋出,逃避责任等) ; back the wrong horse ( 估计错, 选错) 。

4. 西尔维亚·普拉丝( 1932—1963) , 长期旅居英国的美国女诗人。曾获得奖学金在剑桥大学学习, 与诗人泰德·休斯结为夫妇, 后两人离异。因自传体小说《钟罩》而大获成功, 以天鹅之歌《瞪羚》为绝笔。