All is well : An analysis of positivity through adjectives in two contemporary New Age self-help books

• Main Author: Diar Fares, Sonja
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för utbildning, kultur och kommunikation 2018
• Subjects: adjectives; connotation; denotation; semantic prosody; associative meaning; self-help; New Age language; positivity; positive psychology; Abraham Hicks; Eckart Tolle; Adjektiv; semantik; konnotation; New Age språk; själv-hjälp; personlig utveckling; positiv psykologi; Specific Languages; Studier av enskilda språk
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-40144

Self-help counselling is an important industry that not only influences its immediate users’ behavior but also society and social behaviors more generally. Since New Ageis a main branch of self-help, and since positivity is a dominant concept in (New Age) self-help discourse, it is worth analyzing how positivity might be achieved in terms of language use. The present study investigates whether the adjectives in a couple of New Age publications contribute to communicating positivity and, if yes, how. What adjectives are used and how can they be categorized in terms of positive, negative, neutral or undetermined connotations as well as semantic prosody? The findings support the hypothesis that the use of “positive adjectives” (Rozin, Berman & Royzman, 2010, p. 536) is what helps to make New Age self-help books convey a positive spirit.