Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

A Corpus Linguistic Analysis of Self-compassion and Postpartum Self-help Literature

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  • The self-help literature is full of texts on both self-compassion and postpartum depression. However, there has been minimal scientific exploration of the literature on these topics. As such, mental health researchers and practitioners have little sense of the psycholinguistic discourse contained in this literature. This study aimed to fill this gap by analyzing language use in self-compassion and postpartum depression self-help literature. This analysis has two arms: A and B. Arm A focused on the examination of word differences (keyness analysis) and word meanings (collocation analysis) in self-help literature. The four research questions were: (RQ1) In comparison to prominent self-help books with a postpartum focus, what words occur more frequently in self-help books with a self-compassion focus?; (RQ2) In comparison to prominent self-help books with a postpartum focus, what words occur less frequently in self-help books with a self-compassion focus?; (RQ3) In self-help books with a self-compassion focus, what words are associated with the word "self-compassion?"; (RQ4) In prominent self-help books with a postpartum focus, what words are associated with the word "postpartum"? Regarding keyness analysis, the strongest positive key word was "compassion," and the strongest negative key word was "baby." Regarding collocation analysis, the strongest collocates to the node word "self-compassion" were "mantra," "website," and "lacked." In reference to RQ4, the strongest correlates to the node word "postpartum" were "depression," "stress," and "disorder." Implications for counselors using bibliotherapy with postpartum depression clients are discussed. The goal of Arm B was to understand differences between these two literatures in terms of specific psychological and grammatical constructs. The four research questions were : (RQ1) In terms of the self-help literature for postpartum depression, what are the usage rates for the broad psycholinguistic, linguistic, psychological, and self-compassion phenomena?; (RQ2) In terms of the self-help literature for postpartum depression, do linguistic processing word usage rates differ from the self-compassion self-help literature?; (RQ3) In terms of the self-help literature for postpartum depression, do psychological process word usage rates differ from the self-compassion self-help literature?; (RQ4): In terms of the self-help literature for postpartum depression, what are the usage rates for self-compassion processes? Results show the greatest difference was in emotional tone of the psychological process variables. In terms of the linguistic, psychological, and custom (e.g., self-compassion) type variables, the two variables with the most significant differences between the study and reference corpuses were the first-person plural and self-compassion variables. Implications for counselors using bibliotherapy with postpartum depression clients are discussed. In addition, research implications emerging from both arms are presented.
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