Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Language is fundamental in human cognition and communication, helping us to encode the world around us. Adjectives represent a linguistic form used extensively, particularly in the social domain. Adjectives vary in both their valence and their breadth (e.g., “punctual” is narrower than “dependable”). Variations in adjectival breadth have not been studied extensively but may have significant consequences across various domains. The present study explores how subtle distinctions in adjective use may relate to descriptions of experiences that people share. To assess linguistic breadth in online communication, we examine whether online reviews with different star ratings are associated with differences in adjectival breadth. Through an analysis of over 200,000 reviews from Amazon digital music (Study 1) and Yelp restaurants (Study 2), we find evidence that linguistic desirability and breadth of adjectives in reviews positively correlate with their ratings. Specifically, higher-rated reviews tend to use broader and more desirable adjectives. However, this relationship varies between product categories, with high-rated music reviews showing increased linguistic breadth and desirability, while top-rated restaurant reviews demonstrate a decrease in breadth. This paper contributes to understanding linguistic breadth in social media contexts, highlighting how subtle language variations in evaluations can reflect different cognitive and communicative processes.