The Psychological Characteristics Changes Analysis of Su Shi Before and After the Wutai Poetry Case ——Based on the CC-LIWC

Abstract

Su Shi(hereinafter referred to as Su) is a well-known historical celebrity in China, the Wutai Poetry Case(WPC) was a famous literary inquisition in Chinese history, and was a turning point in Su's life. Pevious studies on the influence of WPC were based on Su’s literatures, and there was a lack of empirical researches. In this paper, we conducted the Word Count Verbal Text Analysis on Su's literary works. [Methods] We firstly identified the writing year of Su's complete works, selected essays of five years before and after WPC, and used CC-LIWC(Classical Chinese version of Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) to calculate the word frequency. Then, non-parametric tests were performed, and the CC-LIWC word categories with significant differences were obtained. Finally, the trend of word frequency changes of these categories were also reported. [Results] Before and after WPC, there are 9 categories with significant differences, which are the Third-person singular, Third-person plural, Tensem words, Focus present words, Negative Emotion words, Differentiation words, Perceptual Process words, See words and Time words. [Discussion] From the trend of the word frequency of the 9 categories, Su’s psychological characteristics were consistent with the Buddhist pursuit of being free from foreign objects, paying attention to the present, practicing non-differentiation, and getting out of worries after WPC. This result indicated that Su has been more advocating Buddhism practice after experiencing the political blow, and prove that the method of quantitative analysis is feasible.