Prof. Morgan
ENC 1143, 2pm
Pennebaker Summary
Pennebaker Summary
The human language is not only a way to communicate, but a way to heal ourselves from the inside out. Dr. Pennebaker explains the ways that words are mirrors as well as tools into one 's mind in his essay through his extensive word and writing studies. As a social psychologist, he studies the health benefits of writing one 's secrets or problems on paper instead of keeping them to one 's self. Pennebaker performed all-encompassing research about the connotations of commonly used words in a large computer program called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC); after completing LIWC, he could analyze any text to find the emotion and feeling within the writing.