Judgment or Hope? Quantifying Frequent and Abrupt Changes in the Emotion of Language from the Book of Isaiah

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.84.9907

Keywords:

Language, Emotion, Bible, Isaiah

Abstract

A quantification of the pleasantness of text from the Biblical book of Isaiah (NIV translation) using the Dictionary of Affect in Language indicates that the work has many abrupt changes in emotional tone (p<.05) between its 102 segments. Changes are in line with commentators’ description of the book as a mixture of hope and judgment. Confusion experienced by inexperienced readers of this work could be the result of the recurrent and often un-signaled changes in emotional tone.

Author Biography

Cynthia Whissell, Laurentian University

Cynthia Whissell is a research design specialist and a psycholinguist who teaches in Psychology and in the PhD program in Interdisciplinary Human Studies.  She is a Full Professor with close to 50 years of teaching experience.  Her research focuses on how emotion is expressed in linguistic communications.

References

Everson, A. J. (2019) The vision of the prophet Isaiah: hope in a war-weary world – a commentary. Wipf & Stock; Eugene, OR.

Lutheran study Bible: English Standard Version. (2009) Concordia Publishing House; St Louis, MO.

Oswalt, J. N. (2003) The NIV application commentary: Isaiah. Zondervan; Grand Rapids, MI.

Whissell, C. (2009) ). Using the revised Dictionary of Affect in Language to quantify the emotional undertones of samples of natural language. Psychological Reports, 105, 1-13. 3

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Published

2021-04-13

How to Cite

Whissell, C. (2021). Judgment or Hope? Quantifying Frequent and Abrupt Changes in the Emotion of Language from the Book of Isaiah. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 8(4), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.84.9907

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 4 (2021): Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal

Section

Articles

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Copyright (c) 2021 Cynthia Whissell

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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