Abstract
This research detects the most common words recurring in 326 adolescents' dream language. The analyzed dreams have been previously recorded and then transcribed. Grouping words, we obtained the frequency of the main parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns). Among the nouns, far more frequently represented are terms that refer to important objects of an affective relation. Other significant nouns relate to objects linked to both familial and extra-familial environments. Words related to family relations declined in frequency as age increased and were substituted by terms that refer to relations among friends and to the external world and its objects. Some of these results can be usefully compared with the conclusions derived from the application of other methods of content analysis. This method using dream language analysis could be applied to research concerning dream content, also through specific dictionaries (groups of words defined and classified in relation to a certain theme).
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Maggiolini, A., Azzone, P., Provantini, K. et al. The Words of Adolescents' Dreams: A Quantitative Analysis. Dreaming 13, 107–117 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023354225941
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023354225941