A study of selected linguistic components of involvement in interaction

Numerous scholars have identified interaction involvement as fundamentally important to interpersonal communication. Although researchers have studied trait and nonverbal aspects of involvement, relatively little attention has been directed to its linguistic components. The purpose of this study was to investigate these linguistic components. Two lexical and two syntactic categories were examined. Results indicate that highly involved communicators use more immediate language, speak with greater certainty, and use more relational pronoun references than their less involved counterparts. These results are discussed in relation to previous research on cohesive devices and interaction involvement.