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Language is the currency of most human social processes. We use words to convey our emotions and thoughts, to tell stories, and to understand the world. It is somewhat odd, then, that so few investigations in the social sciences actually focus on natural language use among people in the real world. There are many legitimate reasons for not studying what people say or write. Historically, the analysis of text was slow, complex, and costly. The purpose of this chapter is to suggest that social scientists in general and social psychologists in particular should reconsider the value of language studies. With recent advances in computer text analysis methods, we are now able to explore basic social processes in new and rich ways that could not have been done even a decade ago.