Open Source Library for Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC)

Question

Hi,

I am looking for an open source library for Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Something in java or python will be good, though I am open to use other language.

Does anyone know where I can get one ?

Cheers,

Answer 1

You may find the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) for Python useful: http://www.nltk.org/

Answer 2

As ealdent points out, LIWC is both software and a data set. The data set is proprietary so there is no open-source version of that. For the software side, TAWC is a useful open source Perl version. From the comments:

This is a semi-complicated script adapted from the one used in my CHI papers. The task of this script is to read in regular expressions from a dictionary (or if they're not REs, to make them into REs), which must be backwards-compatible with the LIWC software set (c.f. http://www.liwc.net). It then counts the number of matches for the RE in a single input row / user, and outputs it for that row / user.

You could then buy LIWClite which is less than half the cost of LIWC. You can also use TAWC with your own dictionaries for free.