Challenges and possibilities for the linguistic analysis of counseling talk

Psychological counseling is known as the ‘talking cure’ because counselors and clients talk through perceived issues with the latter’s behaviors, cognitions, emotions, and other personal qualities. Although it concerns mental health, counseling talk has attracted linguists who often have an inherent descriptive interest in language across various contexts. Productive collaboration between counselors and linguists is however not straightforward for several reasons. Nuanced linguistic analyses of isolated examples sometimes fall short of applicability because i) no clear connection is made between linguistic variables and counseling processes and outcomes; ii) rich qualitative insights from session fragments need to be balanced with more representative or generalizable insights across higher levels (e.g. multiple sessions and dyads). In this talk, the speaker will present a general overview of these issues and specific analytic approaches that attempt to address them. These include traditional approaches like conversation and discourse analysis of things ranging from formulations to metaphors, as well as more contemporary approaches leveraging on data analytics. In particular, he will share his recent work combining computerized text analysis with clustering techniques to identify recurrent language patterns across multiple sessions. His main objective is to illustrate the exciting possibilities that lie ahead for promising future researchers who want to apply linguistic research in real-world settings.