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Who Killed Sanmao and Virginia Woolf? A Comparative Study of Writers with Suicidal Attempt Based on a Quantitative Linguistic Method

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Chinese Lexical Semantics (CLSW 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 12278))

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Abstract

Writing style can reflect a writer’s change of mood. It is thus important to discover quantitative linguistic markers of writing styles to be used to analyze the works of writers with suicidal attempt. Using five quantitative linguistic markers, this paper investigates the works of Sanmao and Virginia Woolf -- two writers with suicidal attempt -- diachronically. Although they wrote in different languages, the two writers shared some similarities in terms of these quantitative linguistic markers. Via analyzing quantitative linguistic markers of these two writers’ works, one can clearly see their change of mood and how their writing styles were influenced. This paper also attempts to find out the reasons why they chose to end their lives with this quantitative linguistic method. These quantitative linguistic markers can be utilized in future studies, such as suicidal ideation detection.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Research Funds of Beijing Language and Culture University 20YCX152, and Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Project 18YJA740030. Thanks to Prof. Su Qi, Dr. Wan Mingyu and Zhou Jie from Peking University, Zhang Ying, Pan Yue, Du Bingjie and Zhang Sanle from Beijing Language and Culture University for their discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Science, Beijing Language and Culture University, 15th Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, China

    Shucheng Zhu & Pengyuan Liu

  2. Faculty of Foreign Studies, Beijing Language and Culture University, 15th Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, China

    Xi Wang

  3. Center of National Language Recourse and Monitoring Research Print Media Branch, Beijing Language and Culture University, 15th Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, China

    Pengyuan Liu

Authors
  1. Shucheng Zhu
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  2. Xi Wang
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  3. Pengyuan Liu
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Correspondence to Pengyuan Liu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Meichun Liu

  2. Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kongg, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Chunyu Kit

  3. School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Qi Su

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Zhu, S., Wang, X., Liu, P. (2021). Who Killed Sanmao and Virginia Woolf? A Comparative Study of Writers with Suicidal Attempt Based on a Quantitative Linguistic Method. In: Liu, M., Kit, C., Su, Q. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12278. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81197-6_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81197-6_34

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-81196-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-81197-6

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