title: Language and therapeutic change: a speech acts analysis.
abstract: Drawing on the speech acts theory, a linguistic pattern was identified that could be expected to be associated to therapeutic change, characterized by being uttered in the first person singular and present indicative, and by being self-referential in its propositional content. The frequency of the pattern was examined among verbalizations defined as change moments in three therapies with different theoretical orientation. Results show that the majority of change moments have the specified pattern, and that this pattern is significantly more frequent in change moments than in random non-change-related verbalizations, and so, it does not pertain to therapeutic conversation in general. Implications are discussed concerning the possibility of using the linguistic pattern as an additional and complementary criterion in the identification of moments of change in the therapeutic process.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Reyes
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Aristegui
authors.forename: Mariane
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Krause
authors.forename: Katherine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Strasser
authors.forename: Alemka
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tomicic
authors.forename: Nelson
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Valdes
authors.forename: Carolina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Altimir
authors.forename: Ivonne
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ramirez
authors.forename: Guillermo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: De La Parra
authors.forename: Paula
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dagnino
authors.forename: Orietta
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Echavarri
authors.forename: Oriana
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Vilches
authors.forename: Perla
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ben-Dov
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D013060:Speech; D014705:Verbal Behavior