Table 1: LIWC2007 Output Variable Information
| Category | Abbrev | Examples | Words in category | Validity (judges) | Alpha: Binary/raw |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linguistic Processes | |||||
| Word count | wc | ||||
| words/sentence | wps | ||||
| Dictionary words | dic | ||||
| Words>6 letters | sixltr | ||||
| Total function words | funct | 464 | .97/.40 | ||
| Total pronouns | pronoun | I, them, itself | 116 | .91/.38 | |
| Personal pronouns | ppron | I, them, her | 70 | .88/.20 | |
| 1st pers singular | i | I, me, mine | 12 | .52 | .62/.44 |
| 1st pers plural | we | We, us, our | 12 | .66/.47 | |
| 2nd person | you | You, your, thou | 20 | .73/.34 | |
| 3rd pers singular | shehe | She, her, him | 17 | .75/.52 | |
| 3rd pers plural | they | They, their, they’d | 10 | .50/.36 | |
| Impersonal pronouns | ipron | It, it’s, those | 46 | .78/.46 | |
| Articles | article | A, an, the | 3 | .14/.14 | |
| Common verbs | verb | Walk, went, see | 383 | .97/.42 | |
| Auxiliary verbs | auxverb | Am, will, have | 144 | .91/.23 | |
| Past tense | past | Went, ran, had | 145 | .79 | .94/.75 |
| Present tense | present | Is, does, hear | 169 | .91/.74 | |
| Future tense | future | Will, gonna | 48 | .75/.02 | |
| Adverbs | adverb | Very, really, quickly | 69 | .84/.48 | |
| Prepositions | prep | To, with, above | 60 | .88/.35 | |
| Conjunctions | conj | And, but, whereas | 28 | .70/.21 | |
| Negations | negate | No, not, never | 57 | .80/.28 | |
| Quantifiers | quant | Few, many, much | 89 | .88/.12 | |
| Numbers | number | Second, thousand | 34 | .87/.61 | |
| Swear words | swear | Damn, piss, fuck | 53 | .65/.48 | |
| Psychological Processes | |||||
| Social processes | social | Mate, talk, they, child | 455 | .97/.59 | |
| Family | family | Daughter, husband, aunt | 64 | .87 | .81/.65 |
| Friends | friend | Buddy, friend, neighbor | 37 | .70 | .53/.12 |
| Humans | human | Adult, baby, boy | 61 | .86/.26 | |
| Affective processes | affect | Happy, cried, abandon | 915 | .97/.36 | |
| Positive emotion | posemo | Love, nice, sweet | 406 | .41 | .97/.40 |
| Negative emotion | negemo | Hurt, ugly, nasty | 499 | .31 | .97/.61 |
| Anxiety | anx | Worried, fearful, nervous | 91 | .38 | .89/.33 |
| Anger | anger | Hate, kill, annoyed | 184 | .22 | .92/.55 |
| Sadness | sad | Crying, grief, sad | 101 | .07 | .91/.45 |
| Cognitive processes | cogmech | cause, know, ought | 730 | .97/.37 | |
| Insight | insight | think, know, consider | 195 | .94/.51 | |
| Causation | cause | because, effect, hence | 108 | .44 | .88/.26 |
| Discrepancy | discrep | should, would, could | 76 | .21 | .80/.28 |
| Tentative | tentat | maybe, perhaps, guess | 155 | .87/.13 | |
| Certainty | certain | always, never | 83 | .85/.29 | |
| Inhibition | inhib | block, constrain, stop | 111 | .91/.20 | |
| Inclusive | incl | And, with, include | 18 | .66/.32 | |
| Exclusive | excl | But, without, exclude | 17 | .67/.47 | |
| Perceptual processes | percept | Observing, heard, feeling | 273 | .96/.43 | |
| See | see | View, saw, seen | 72 | .90/.43 | |
| Hear | hear | Listen, hearing | 51 | .89/.37 | |
| Feel | feel | Feels, touch | 75 | .88/.26 | |
| Biological processes | bio | Eat, blood, pain | 567 | .53 | .95/.53 |
| Body | body | Cheek, hands, spit | 180 | .93/.45 | |
| Health | health | Clinic, flu, pill | 236 | .85/.38 | |
| Sexual | sexual | Horny, love, incest | 96 | .69/.34 | |
| Ingestion | ingest | Dish, eat, pizza | 111 | .86/.68 | |
| Relativity | relativ | Area, bend, exit, stop | 638 | .98/.51 | |
| Motion | motion | Arrive, car, go | 168 | .96/.41 | |
| Space | space | Down, in, thin | 220 | .96/.44 | |
| Time | time | End, until, season | 239 | .94/.58 | |
| Personal Concerns | |||||
| Work | work | Job, majors, xerox | 327 | .91/.69 | |
| Achievement | achieve | Earn, hero, win | 186 | .93/.37 | |
| Leisure | leisure | Cook, chat, movie | 229 | .88/.50 | |
| Home | home | Apartment, kitchen, family | 93 | .81/.57 | |
| Money | money | Audit, cash, owe | 173 | .90/.53 | |
| Religion | relig | Altar, church, mosque | 159 | .91/.53 | |
| Death | death | Bury, coffin, kill | 62 | .86/.40 | |
| Spoken categories | |||||
| Assent | assent | Agree, OK, yes | 30 | .59/.41 | |
| Nonfluencies | nonflu | Er, hm, umm | 8 | .28/.23 | |
| Fillers | filler | Blah, Imean, youknow | 9 | .63/.18 | |
Words in category refers to the number of different dictionary words that make up the variable category. Validity judges reflect the simple correlations between judges' ratings of the category with the LIWC variable (from Pennebaker & Francis, 1996). Alphas refer to the Cronbach alphas for the internal reliability of the specific words within each category. The binary alphas are computed on the occurrence/non-occurrence of each dictionary word whereas the raw or uncorrected alphas are based on the percentage of use of each of the category words within the texts. All alphas were computed on a sample of 2800 randomly selected text files from our language corpus.
The LIWC dictionary generally arranges categories hierachically. For example, all pronouns are included in the overarching category of function words. The category of pronouns is the sum of personal and impersonal pronouns. There are some exceptions to the hierarchy rules:
Common verbs are not included in the function word category. Similarly, common verbs (as opposed to auxiliary verbs) that are tagged by verb tense are included in the past, present, and future tense categories but not in the overall function word categories.
Social processes include a large group of words (originally used in LIWC2001) that denote social processes, including all non-first-person-singular personal pronouns as well as verbs that suggest human interaction (talking, sharing).
Perceptual processes include the entire dictionary of the Qualia category (which is a separate dictionary), which includes multiple sensory and perceptual dimensions associated with the five senses.