| 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] a | verb | Walk, went, see | 383 | .97/.42 | |
| Auxiliary verbs | auxverb | Am, will, have | 144 | .91/.23 | |
| Past tense a | past | Went, ran, had | 145 | .79 | .94/.75 |
| Present tense a | present | Is, does, hear | 169 | .91/.74 | |
| Future tense a | 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 | |
| Category | Abbrev | Examples | Words in category | Validity (judges) | Alpha: Binary/raw |
| Psychological Processes | |||||
| Social processes b | 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 c | 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 | |
| Category | Abbrev | Examples | Words in category | Validity (judges) | Alpha: Binary/raw |
| 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: