Language and therapeutic change: A speech acts analysis

Drawing on the speech acts theory, a linguistic pattern was identified that could be expected to be associated to therapeutic change, characterized by being uttered in the first person singular and present indicative, and by being self-referential in its propositional content. The frequency of the pattern was examined among verbalizations defined as change moments in three therapies with different theoretical orientation. Results show that the majority of change moments have the specified pattern, and that this pattern is significantly more frequent in change moments than in random non-change-related verbalizations, and so, it does not pertain to therapeutic conversation in general. Implications are discussed concerning the possibility of using the linguistic pattern as an additional and complementary criterion in the identification of moments of change in the therapeutic process.