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Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC)

Brief description

Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC; pronounced "Luke") is a text analysis program that calculates the percentage of words in a given text that fall into one or more of over 80 linguistic, psychological and topical categories indicating various social, cognitive, and affective processes. You can use LIWC, for example, to determine the degree in which a text uses positive or negative emotions, self-references or causal words.

The core of the program is a dictionary containing words that belong to these categories. Dictionaries for many languages are available; it is also possible to define your own dictionary, for example to define one or more categories that are not included in the standard dictionary.

Instruction

Operator's Manual LIWC 2015
Extensive online software manual.

Introduction to Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture at University of British Columbia).
Video clip introducing the use of LIWC.

Availability

LIWC is available on VU-pc's for staff and students of the Faculty of Humanities (with limitations on concurrent access).

More information

LIWC website.

How it works. Brief background information about LIWC.

Tausczik, Y.R. & Pennebaker, J.W. 2014. The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29 (1), 24-54. DOI: 10.1177/0261927X09351676
This article reviews several computerized text analysis methods and describes how LIWC was created and validated.