JOURNAL ARTICLE

I'm so OCD lol: A corpus-based study of obsessive-compulsive disorder used as an adjective.

  • Published In: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2025, v. 30, n. 1. P. 24 1 of 3

  • Database: Academic Search Ultimate 2 of 3

  • Authored By: Batchelor, Jordan; Lee-Laminack, Heewon 3 of 3

Abstract

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by recurrent thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors (compulsions) that are thought to help mitigate obsessions (APA, 2013). One issue that has gained attention in popular discourse is the use of OCD as an adjective (e.g. I'm so OCD), which is said to trivialize the disorder (NAMI, 2015). We collected a corpus of social media comments including the phrase degree adverb + OCD. The corpus was tagged with a semantic tagger (Rayson et al., 2004) to investigate the domains around the phrase. About a quarter of the 1,575 comments used the phrase to critique the popular usage of OCD as an adjective, suggesting that it is frequently negatively evaluated. The remaining genuine uses support the idea that the phrase is often used in non-medical contexts, including to express individual preferences for organization and cleanliness. We argue that this usage is negatively evaluated because it demedicalizes OCD and portrays it with a light-hearted tone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additional Information

  • Source:International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 2025/01, Vol. 30, Issue 1, p24
  • Document Type:Article
  • Subject Area:Literature and Writing
  • Publication Date:2025
  • ISSN:1384-6655
  • DOI:10.1075/ijcl.23081.bat
  • Accession Number:186746915
  • Copyright Statement:Copyright of International Journal of Corpus Linguistics is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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