Context in Natural Language Processing Research: Advancing an Understanding of Affordances and Constraints on Verbal Behavior

Abstract

This paper examines the critical, yet undertheorized role of context in verbal communication when computers are used to analyze language data. Drawing on multiple disciplines and prior work from communication and social psychology, an interactionist perspective is reviewed and applied to computational settings to demonstrate how individual, interpersonal, social, and situational factors afford or constrain verbal behavior. Using examples of language complexity and processing fluency research, this paper demonstrates how contextual factors like instrumental goal activation can reverse seemingly established relationships between simple language features and behavioral outcomes. The paper concludes by advocating for methodological approaches that systematically integrate contextual variables into natural language processing research, enabling scholars to resolve contradictory findings, enhance replicability, and develop a more nuanced understanding of how language reveals psychological processes.

Keywords

context communication language psychology of language interactionist perspective

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alter

A. L.

Oppenheimer

D. M.

(2009). Uniting the tribes of fluency to form a metacognitive nation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(3), 219–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309341564

Alterman

(2004). When presidents lie. Viking Penguin.

Applegate

J. L.

Delia

J. G.

(1980). Person-centered speech, psychological development, and the contexts of language usage. In Clair

R. S.

Giles

(Eds.), The social and psychological contexts of language usage (pp. 245–282). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Argyle

Furnham

Graham

J. A.

(1981). Social situations. Cambridge University Press.

Asendorpf

J. B.

(2009). Personality: Traits and situations. In The Cambridge handbook of personality psychology (pp. 43–53). Cambridge University Press.

Bazarova

N. N.

Choi

Y. H.

(2014). Self-disclosure in social media: Extending the functional approach to disclosure motivations and characteristics on social network sites. Journal of Communication, 64(4), 635–657. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12106

Berger

C. R.

(1997). Planning strategic interaction: Attaining goals through communicative action (pp. x, 162). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Berger

C. R.

(2008). Planning theory of communication. In Engaging theories in interpersonal communication: Multiple perspectives (pp. 89–101). Sage Publications, Inc.

Berger

C. R.

Bradac

J. J.

(1982). Language and social knowledge: Uncertainty in interpersonal relations. Arnold. https://www.scirp.org/reference/referencespapers?referenceid=2996325

10.

Biber

Connor

Upton

T. A.

(2007). Discourse on the move: Using corpus analysis to describe discourse structure. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

11.

Bourdieu

(1990). The logic of practice. Stanford University Press.

12.

Boyd

R. L.

Markowitz

D. M.

(2025). Verbal behavior and the future of social science. American Psychologist, 80(3), 411–433. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001319

13.

Boyd

R. L.

Pasca

Lanning

(2020). The personality panorama: Conceptualizing personality through big behavioural data. European Journal of Personality, 34(5), 599–612. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2254

14.

Boyd

R. L.

Schwartz

H. A.

(2021). Natural language analysis and the psychology of verbal behavior: The past, present, and future states of the field. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 40(1), 21–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X20967028

15.

Brown

P. J.

(1996). The stick-e document: A framework for creating context-aware applications. Electronic Publishing, 8(2–3), 259–272.

16.

Burgoon

J. K.

(1993). Interpersonal expectations, expectancy violations, and emotional communication. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 12(1–2), 30–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X93121003

17.

Burleson

B. R.

(2009). The nature of interpersonal communication: A message-centered approach. In Berger

C. R.

Roloff

M. E.

Roskos-Ewoldsen

D. R.

(Eds.), The handbook of communication science (pp. 145–165). Sage Publications, Inc.

18.

Caso

Cavagnis

Vrij

Palena

(2023). Cues to deception: Can complications, common knowledge details, and self-handicapping strategies discriminate between truths, embedded lies and outright lies in an Italian-speaking sample? Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1128194 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1128194

19.

Caughlin

J. P.

Wilson

S R

(2021) Multiple goals theories: From message production to evaluation. In Engaging theories in interpersonal communication (3rd ed., pp 52–63). Routledge.

20.

Clark

H. H.

(1996). Using language. Cambridge University Press.

21.

Clark

H. H.

Brennan

S. E.

(1991). Grounding in communication. In Resnick

L. B.

Levine

J. M.

(Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 127–149). American Psychological Association.

22.

Derlega

V. J.

Grzelak

(1979). Appropriateness of self-disclosure. In Chelune

G. J.

(Ed.), Self-disclosure: Origins, patterns, and implications of openness in interpersonal relationships (pp. 151–176). Jossey-Bass.

23.

Dey

A. K.

(2001). Understanding and using context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 5(1), 4–7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s007790170019

24.

Dillard

J. P.

(1990) A goal-driven model of interpersonal influence. In Dillard

J. P.

(Ed), Seeking compliance: The production of interpersonal influence messages (pp 41–56). Gorsuch-Scarisbrick.

25.

Dillard

J. P.

Segrin

Harden

J. M.

(1989). Primary and secondary goals in the production of interpersonal influence messages. Communication Monographs, 56(1), 19–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758909390247

26.

Dilley

R. M.

(2002). The problem of context in social and cultural anthropology. Language & Communication, 22(4), 437–456. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(02)00019-8

27.

Dunbar

N. E.

(2017) Deception in intergroup communication. In Giles

Harwood

(Eds), Oxford encyclopedia of intergroup communication (pp 294–305). Oxford University Press.

28.

Duranti

Goodwin

(1992). Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge University Press.

29.

Falleti

T. G.

Lynch

J. F.

(2009). Context and causal mechanisms in political analysis. Comparative Political Studies, 42(9), 1143–1166. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414009331724

30.

Fiske

S. T.

(2018). Stereotype content: Warmth and competence endure. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(2), 67–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417738825

31.

Fiske

S. T.

Cuddy

A. J. C.

Glick

(2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(6), 878–902. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.6.878

32.

Flesch

(1948). A new readability yardstick. Journal of Applied Psychology, 32(3), 221–233. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0057532

33.

French

Bazarova

N. N.

(2017). Is anybody out there?: Understanding masspersonal communication through expectations for response across social media platforms. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 22(6), 303–319. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12197

34.

Ganesan

A. V.

Mangalik

Varadarajan

Soni

Juhng

Sedoc

Schwartz

H. A.

Giorgi

Boyd

R. L.

(2024). From text to context: Contextualizing language with humans, groups, and communities for socially aware NLP. In Zhang

Schneider

Chaturvedi

(Eds.), Proceedings of the 2024 conference of the north American chapter of the association for computational linguistics: Human language technologies (volume 5: Tutorial abstracts) (pp. 26–33). Association for Computational Linguistics.

35.

Gibson

J. J.

(1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin.

36.

Giles

Hewstone

(1982). Cognitive structures, speech, and social situations: Two integrative models. Language Sciences, 4(2), 187–219. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(82)80005-3

37.

Gollwitzer

Schwabe

(2021). Context dependency as a predictor of replicability. Review of General Psychology, 26(2), 241–249. https://doi.org/10.1177/10892680211015635

38.

Greene

J. O.

(1984). A cognitive approach to human communication: An action assembly theory. Communication Monographs, 51(4), 289–306. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758409390203

39.

Hauch

Blandón-Gitlin

Masip

Sporer

S. L.

(2015). Are computers effective lie detectors? A meta-analysis of linguistic cues to deception. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 19(4), 307–342. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868314556539

40.

Hogan

(2009). Much ado about nothing: The person–situation debate. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(2), 249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.01.022

41.

Kacewicz

Pennebaker

J. W.

Davis

Jeon

Graesser

A. C.

(2014). Pronoun use reflects standings in social hierarchies. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 33(2), 125–143. https://doi.org/10.1177/026192713502654

42.

Kellermann

(2004). A goal-directed approach to gaining compliance: Relating differences among goals to differences in behaviors. Communication Research, 31(4), 397–445. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650204266093

43.

Kellermann

Shea

B. C.

(1996). Threats, suggestions, hints, and promises: Gaining compliance efficiently and politely. Communication Quarterly, 44(2), 145–165. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463379609370007

44.

Knapp

M. L.

Daly

Albada

Miller

(2002). Backgrounds and current trends in the study of interpersonal communication. In Knapp

M. L.

Daly

(Eds), Handbook of interpersonal communication (pp. 3–20). Sage.

45.

Labroo

A. A.

Kim

(2009). The “instrumentality” heuristic: Why metacognitive difficulty is desirable during goal pursuit. Psychological Science, 20(1), 127–134. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02264.x

46.

Lapinski

M. K.

Rimal

R. N.

(2005). An explication of social norms. Communication Theory, 15(2), 127–147. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2005.tb00329.x

47.

Levelt

W. J. M.

(1989). Speaking: From intention to articulation. MIT Press.

48.

Lewis

(1981). Index, context, and content. In Kanger

Ōhman

(Eds.), Philosophy and grammar: Papers on the occasion of the quincentennial of Uppsala university (pp. 79–100). Springer Netherlands.

49.

Litt

(2012). Knock, knock. Who’s there? The imagined audience. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(3), 330–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2012.705195

50.

Littlejohn

S. W.

Foss

K. A.

(2010). Theories of human communication (10th ed.). Waveland Press.

51.

Magnusson

(Ed.). (1981). Toward a psychology of situations: An interactional perspective. Psychology Press.

52.

Markowitz

D. M.

(2018). Academy awards speeches reflect social status, cinematic roles, and winning expectations. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 37(3), 376–387. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927(17751012

53.

Markowitz

D. M.

(2019). What words are worth: National science foundation grant abstracts indicate award funding. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 38(3), 264–282. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X18824859

54.

Markowitz

D. M.

(2020). The deception faucet: A metaphor to conceptualize deception and its detection. New Ideas in Psychology, 59, 100816–100816. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2020.100816

55.

Markowitz

D. M.

(2022). Gender and ethnicity bias in medicine: A text analysis of 1.8 million critical care records. PNAS Nexus, 1(4), pgac157. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac157

56.

Markowitz

D. M.

(2023a). Analytic thinking as revealed by function words: What does language really measure? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 37(3), 643–650. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.4057

57.

Markowitz

D. M.

(2023b). Instrumental goal activation increases online petition support across languages. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(6), 1133–1145. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000333

58.

Markowitz

D. M.

(2024a). From complexity to clarity: How AI enhances perceptions of scientists and the public’s understanding of science. PNAS Nexus, 3(9), pgae387. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae387

59.

Markowitz

D. M.

(2024b). Words for sale: Linguistic complexity associates with higher housing prices in online realty advertisements. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 43(5–6), 717–729. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X231154911

60.

Markowitz

D. M.

Griffin

D. J.

(2020). When context matters: How false, truthful, and genre-related communication styles are revealed in language. Psychology, Crime & Law, 26(3), 287–310. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2019.1652751

61.

Markowitz

D. M.

Hancock

J. T.

(2016). Linguistic obfuscation in fraudulent science. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 35(4), 435–445. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X15614605

62.

Markowitz

D. M.

Hancock

J. T.

(2019). Deception and language: The contextual organization of language and deception (COLD) framework. In Docan-Morgan

(Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of deceptive communication (pp. 193–212). Palgrave Macmillan.

63.

Markowitz

D. M.

Hancock

J. T.

Woodworth

M. T.

Ely

(2023). Contextual considerations for deception production and detection in forensic interviews. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1134052 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1134052

64.

Markowitz

D. M.

Kouchaki

Hancock

J. T.

Gino

(2021). The deception spiral: Corporate obfuscation leads to perceptions of immorality and cheating behavior. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 40(2), 277–296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X20949594

65.

Markowitz

D. M.

Shulman

H. C.

(2021). The predictive utility of word familiarity for online engagements and funding. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(18), e2026045118–e2026045118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2026045118

66.

Markowitz

D. M.

Song

Taylor

S. H.

(2021). Tracing the adoption and effects of open science in communication research. Journal of Communication, 71(5), 739–763. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqab030

67.

Marwick

A. E.

boyd

(2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13(1), 114–133. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444810365313

68.

Mehl

M. R.

Robbins

M. L.

Holleran

S. E.

(2012). How taking a word for a word can be problematic: Context-dependent linguistic markers of extraversion and neuroticism. Journal of Methods and Measurement in the Social Sciences, 3(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.2458/v3i2.16477

69.

Miller

G. R.

(1990). Interpersonal communication. In Dahnke

G. L.

Clatterbuck

G. W.

(Eds.), Human communication: Theory and research (pp. 91–122). Wadsworth.

70.

Nahari

Vrij

Fisher

R. P.

(2014). Exploiting liars’ verbal strategies by examining the verifiability of details. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 19(2), 227–239. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8333.2012.02069.x

71.

Newman

M. L.

Groom

C. J.

Handelman

L. D.

Pennebaker

J. W.

(2008). Gender differences in language use: An analysis of 14,000 text samples. Discourse Processes, 45(3), 211–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/01638530802073712

72.

Newman

M. L.

Pennebaker

J. W.

Berry

D. S.

Richards

J. M.

(2003). Lying words: Predicting deception from linguistic styles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(5), 665–675. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167203029005010

73.

Open Science Collaboration . (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716

74.

Oppenheimer

D. M.

(2006). Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1178

75.

Oppenheimer

D. M.

(2008). The secret life of fluency. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(6), 237–241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2008.02.014

76.

Pascoe

(1998). Adding generic contextual capabilities to wearable computers [Paper Presentation]. Digest of Papers. Second International Symposium on Wearable Computers (Cat. No.98EX215), 92–99.

77.

Pennebaker

J. W.

(2011). The secret life of pronouns: What our words say about us. Bloomsbury Press.

78.

Pennebaker

J. W.

Chung

C. K.

Frazee

Lavergne

G. M.

Beaver

D. I.

(2014). When small words foretell academic success: The case of college admissions essays. PLoS ONE, 9(12), e115844–e115844. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115844

79.

Pettigrew

T. F.

(2018). The emergence of contextual social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(7), 963–971. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218756033

80.

Rauthmann

J. F.

Gallardo-Pujol

Guillaume

E. M.

Todd

Nave

C. S.

Sherman

R. A.

Ziegler

Jones

A. B.

Funder

D. C.

(2014). The situational eight DIAMONDS: A taxonomy of major dimensions of situation characteristics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(4), 677–718. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037250

81.

Rauthmann

J. F.

Sherman

R. A.

Funder

D. C.

(2015). Principles of situation research: Towards a better understanding of psychological situations. European Journal of Personality, 29(3), 363–381. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.1994

82.

Reis

H. T.

(2008). Reinvigorating the concept of situation in social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12(4), 311–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868308321721

83.

Rodden

Chervest

Davies

Dix

(1998). Exploiting context in HCI design for mobile systems [Paper Presentation]. Workshop on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.57.1279

84.

Schilit

B. N.

Adams

Want

(1994). Context-aware computing applications. 1994 First Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, 85–90. https://doi.org/10.1109/WMCSA.1994.16

85.

Schilit

B. N.

Theimer

M. M.

(1994). Disseminating active map information to mobile hosts. IEEE Network, 8(5), 22–32. https://doi.org/10.1109/65.313011

86.

Schwarz

(2004). Metacognitive experiences in consumer judgment and decision making. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 14(4), 332–348. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327663jcp1404_2

87.

Schwarz

(2012). Feelings-as-information theory. In Van Lange

P. A. M.

Kruglanski

A. W.

Higgins

E. T.

(Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology: Volume 1 (pp. 289–308). Sage Publications Inc.

88.

Shulman

H. C.

Bullock

O. M.

Riggs

E. E.

(2021). The interplay of jargon, motivation, and fatigue while processing COVID-19 crisis communication over time. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 40(5–6), 546–573. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X211043100

89.

Shulman

H. C.

Markowitz

D. M.

Rogers

(2024). Reading dies in complexity: Online news consumers prefer simple writing. Science Advances, 10(23), adn2555. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adn2555

90.

Stalnaker

(2014). Context. Oxford University Press.

91.

Tausczik

Y. R.

Pennebaker

J. W.

(2010). The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29(1), 24–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X09351676

92.

Toma

C. L.

Hancock

J. T.

(2012). What lies beneath: The linguistic traces of deception in online dating profiles. Journal of Communication, 62(1), 78–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01619.x

93.

Waldron

V. R.

(1997). Toward a theory of interactive conversational planning. In Greene

J. O.

(Ed.), Message production: Advances in communication theory (pp. 195–220). Erlbaum.

94.

Waldron

V. R.

Applegate

J. L.

(1994). Interpersonal construct differentiation and conversational planning: An examination of two cognitive accounts for the production of competent verbal disagreement tactics. Human Communication Research, 21(1), 3–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1994.tb00337.x

95.

Waldron

V. R.

Cegala

D. J.

(1992). Assessing conversational cognition: Levels of cognitive theory and associated methodological requirements. Human Communication Research, 18(4), 599–622. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1992.tb00573.x

96.

Ward

Jones

Hopper

(1997). A new location technique for the active office. IEEE Personal Communications, 4(5), 42–47. https://doi.org/10.1109/98.626982

97.

Wilson

S. R.

(2002). Seeking and resisting compliance: Why people say what they do when trying to influence others. Sage Publications, Inc.

98.

Wilson

S. R.

Sabee

C. M.

(2003). Explicating communicative competence as a theoretical term. In Handbook of communication and social interaction skills (pp. 3–50). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

99.

Wooldridge

(2009). An introduction to multiagent systems (2nd ed.). Wiley.

100.

Yule

(2010). The study of language (4th ed.). Cambridge University Press.