Document Type : Research
Authors
1 Ph.D. student of Alzahra University
2 Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Alzahra University
Abstract
Bipolar affective disorder is a mood disorder in which the sufferer experiences marked mood swings which are beyond what most people experience. About one percent of people around the world have had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at some point in their lifetime, most of whom have heightened level of creativity. With respect to descriptive psychiatry, a host of artists, including authors, have been seen with bipolar disorder. This study provides a linguistic analysis of bipolar disorder; the case study is Sadegh Hedayat's letters. Actually it makes an attempt to find out whether it is possible to diagnose bipolar disorder via studying linguistic features in people's texts. The results of the present research might contribute to clinical studies as well. It seems that language and cognition are aligned. In addition, on the basis of ideational metafunction of language, language is the reflection of human's mind and it interprets human's experience. In this research, Sadegh Hedayat's letters to Shahid Nourai are studied. The addressee is fixed to minimize the effective factors. The data is semantically analyzed and to study pressured speech and poverty of speech, topical shifts and moves are analyzed as well. Based on linguistic study of each letter, the result shows that each bipolar disorder episode, i.e. hypomania, depression, euthymia and mixed can be diagnosed by using the mentioned linguistic criteria as shown below.
The number and the date of the letters written in hypomanic episode are
shown in the table.
3- March 15, 1946
5- June 7, 1946
8- July 25, 1946
10- October 2, 1946
11- October 17, 1946
12- November 17, 1946
16- January 13, 1947
17- January 25, 1947
18- February 9, 1947
19- February 13, 1947
20- February 22, 1947
24- April 9, 1947
25- April 19, 1947
26- May 5, 1947
27- May 15, 1947
28- June 5, 1947
32- September 15, 1947
33- September 29, 1947
36- November 10, 1947
37- May 3, 1948
41- July 11, 1948
42- July 11, 1948
45-August 5, 1948
48- September 5, 1948
49- September 8, 1948
54- November 29, 1948
55- December 11, 1948
56- January 19, 1949
57- February 6, 1949
58- February 19, 1949
61- April 16, 1949
63- May 7, 1949
64- May 22, 1949
65- June 10, 1949
66- June 18, 1949
68- July 29, 1949
69- August 24, 1949
71- October 29, 1949
73- January 20, 1950
77- August 13, 1950
The number and the date of the letters related to mixed episode are shown in the table.
1- January 7, 1946
2- February 19, 1946
4- May 8, 1946
6- June 28, 1946
7- July 14, 1946
9- August 30, 1946
13- November 24, 1946
14- December 2, 1946
21- March 3, 1947
22- March 21, 1947
23- April 2 or 3, 1947
29- July 14, 1947
30- August 10, 1947
31- August 25, 1947
34- October 11, 1947
35- November 3, 1947
38- May 22, 1948
39- June 10, 1948
40- early June, 1948
43- July 18, 1948
44- July 25, 1948
46- August 18, 1948
47- August 29, 1948
50- October 3, 1948
51- October 19, 1948
52- November 8, 1948
53- November 15, 1948
59- April 3, 1949
62- May 1, 1949
67- July 12, 1949
70- October 2, 1949
74- June 3, 1950
75- July 2, 1950
76- July 22, 1950
78- August 27, 1950
79- October 10, 1950
The number and the date of the letters related to euthymic episode are shown in the table.
15- December 8, 1946
60- April 4, 1949
80- November 2, 1950
81- November 17, 1950
82- November 23, 1950
In addition, only one letter was spotted to be related to depression.
The findings of this research confirm psychiatric achievements. Obviously, other semantic criteria (such as humiliation and ridicule) are introduced, which are in line with psychiatric definitions. The existence of the mixed episode in the episodes of bipolarity which Sadegh Hedayat had experienced is one of the achievements of this research. Also, the semantic characteristics, the rate of topical shifts and moves of these episodes have been studied. In addition, the study of letters in terms of the time of writing, clearly indicates the characteristics of bipolar disorder episodes in the intervals such as hypomania which is accompanied by pressured speech, and the depression episode which is accompanied by poverty of speech. Moreover, it seems that Hedayat suffered from rapid cycling bipolar disorder.
Keywords
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