Linguistic Markers Of Dysfunctional Cognitive Schemes

The Theories of cognitive-behavioral trends are present both in Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and Aaron T. Beck’s studies on depressed clients. Aaron found that for the depressive people, distorted information processing mechanisms are working, mechanisms that result in a negative view of the patient on his person or future and the world in general. These cognitive contents underlie the behavioral, emotional and motivational symptoms of the depressive. The goal that we have proposed in this paper is to conduct an exploratory research on patients’ productions that were present in psychotherapy, in order to identify linguistic markers in their speech as well as possible criteria for classifying them. Following the empirical data collection, we aim to create a tool to quantify the linguistic markers and, afterwards, a program of psychotherapy based on linguistic markers modification of dysfunctional cognitive schemes. The main conclusions we have drawn from the conducted pilot research are limited to the investigated cases, due to the small number of cases and the difficulty to get a valid statistical analysis from the obtained data. We have managed to identify the presence of linguistic markers triggering dysfunctional cognitive schemes, regarding the investigated cases, presenting disorders of anxiety disorders and affective sphere. We were unable to apply the questionnaire of cognitive schemes to all the cases included in the investigation. To some of them we have identified in an empirical manner the presence of dysfunctional cognitive schemes and that did not allow performing a valid statistical analysis. We have also identified several criteria for the classification and quantification of linguistic markers but the list remains open, since we have analyzed only those verbs of speech. That because they were created in the main means of therapeutic change in a few cases.