Language and Social Influence

Research on language and social influence declined after the 1970s, possibly due to the variable-analytic approach to research that lacked theoretical models and failed to build on itself. However, with advances in language analysis software and access to text-based data online, there has been a large increase in research in the last decade on language and social influence. Much of this research uses the software Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) and examines non-contextual language, such as function words. We review research on language and social influence for pronouns, emotional language, authentic language, language complexity, and language style matching, suggesting theoretical directions for this research that could avoid the limitations of the variable-analytic research of the 1960–70s.