6. Verbal Behavior and
Personality Assessment
Walter WeintraubSpeech can be studied from a variety of viewpoints. The language
component can be divided into the disciplines of (i) phonology,
which describes how sounds are put together to form words; (2) syn-
tax, which describes how sentences are formed from words; (3)
semantics, which deals with the interpretations of the meaning of
words; and (4) pragmatics, which describes how we participate in
conversations. Nonverbal phenomena include such variables as rate,
pauses, amplitude, and pitch.
Of the speech data available for analysis, syntactic and certain par-
alinguistic variables are most suitable for the study of personality
traits. Semantic variables, on the other hand, have only limited use-
fulness for the identification of habitual behavioral responses. Speak-
ers do differ in their choice of vocabulary, but such preferences are
influenced by certain situational variables, notably the topic of con-
versation (Laffal 1965, 93). Other investigators have stressed the
slow rate of change of a number of syntactic measures and their suit-
ability for the study of characteristic behavior. Steingart and Freed-
man (1972), for example, have written:
Common sense argues that what a person says is much more
influenced by transient situational characteristics than how he
says it. ... grammar would appear a priori to possess certain
advantages for the exploration of... personality constructs. (135)
Systems of verbal analysis that depend upon the measurement of
meaning demand the exercise of subtle judgment by scorers. Syntac-
137