
Examining the language of solitude versus loneliness in tweets
Author(s) -
Will E. Hipson,
Svetlana Kiritchenko,
Saif M. Mohammad,
Robert J. Coplan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of social and personal relationships
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.251
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1460-3608
pISSN - 0265-4075
DOI - 10.1177/0265407521998460
Subject(s) - solitude , loneliness , psychology , feeling , social psychology , belongingness , cognitive psychology , psychotherapist
People have widely different experiences of being alone. Sometimes being alone is relaxing and restorative other times it gives way to feelings of loneliness. Researchers conceptually distinguish between solitude, which tends to be viewed more positively, and loneliness, which is more negative. However, it is unclear whether these terms are used differently in everyday language. We sought to compare the emotional content of over 19 million tweets containing the terms solitude and lonely/loneliness. Using a computational linguistics approach, we found that solitude tends to be used in more positive and less emotionally activated (i.e., lower arousal) contexts compared to lonely. We also found that the word alone tends to be used somewhat differently from solitude and lonely. These results have implications both for how we understand different experiences of time alone in general and for what kind of language we should use when discussing these experiences.