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: forinstance, the"social integration / disengagement"model of sociologist Emile Durkheim2, whotheorized that a major cause of suicide was an individual's lack of bonding with others, and amore traditional model emphasizing the role of hopelessness and helplessness. PsychologistsJames Pennebaker from the University of Texas, Austin, and Shannon Wiltsey Stirman of theUniversity 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 andnationality who lived at approximately the same time. About 300 poems were analyzed bysoftware called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, which is programmed to recognize some 70dimensions of language, such as whether a word is a pronoun, or whether it refers to anegative emotion. The researchers tested Durkheim's integration theory by looking atreferences 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 thatcommitted suicide, says Pennebacker:"Nonsuicidal poets are not a particularly optimisticgroup. "But a higher number of first person singular self-references in the works of the suicidalpoets suggested they were more self-preoccupied and detached from others — thus backingup3 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 "becameless common, signaling increasing isolation. " A tremendous amount of action is in thepronouns, "he says.

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

　　練習題：

　　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?

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

　　2. self-preoccupied and isolated

　　3."talk"or"alone"

　　Ⅱ. 70 .

　　1. control n. 檢查, 核對, ( 試驗中的) 對照( 處理) 。這里所說的control group 指control poets, 可以翻譯成“ 對照組詩人”, 也就是下文提到的nonsuicidal poets。

　　2. 涂爾干( 1858—1927) , 法國實證主義社會學家、法國社會學學派的奠基人, 認為勞動分工是社會團結的基礎,“集體意志”在社會中具有決定性作用。主要著作《論社會分工》、《論自殺》等。

　　3. 支持, 為……撐腰, 堵塞, 攔( 水) 。back down ( 放棄權利等, 撒手, 打退堂鼓, 取消前言) ;back off ( 退避, 后退) ; back on to ( 背靠著) ; back out ( of) ( 放棄某事, 取消, 扭松, 旋出,逃避責任等) ; back thewrong horse ( 估計錯, 選錯) 。

　　4. 西爾維亞·普拉絲( 1932—1963) , 長期旅居英國的美國女詩人。曾獲得獎學金在劍橋大學學習, 與詩人泰德·休斯結為夫婦, 后兩人離異。因自傳體小說《鐘罩》而大獲成功, 以天鵝之歌《瞪羚》為絕筆。