bookstand

The Secret Life of Pronouns

What Our Words Say About Us

James W. Pennebaker

First annotation on . Last on .

45 quotes

language-arts

Chapter 1

  • Often, some of the most revealing words that we use are the shortest and most forgettable. Pronouns (such as I, you, we, and they), articles (a, an, the), prepositions (e.g., to, for, over), and other stealth words broadcast the kind of people we are.Nov 17 2023 6:37PM
  • Who, for example, would have ever predicted that the high school student who uses too many verbs in her college admissions essay is likely to make lower grades in college? Or that the poet who overuses the word I in his poetry is at higher risk of suicide? Or that a certain world leader’s use of pronouns could reliably presage whether he’d lead his country into war?Nov 17 2023 6:39PM
  • To cast a fairly broad net we developed other lexicons that measured the occurrence of other types of words, such as the use of different types of pronouns (e.g., first-person singular—such as I, me, and my), articles (a, an, the), different types of thinking-related words that signal cause-effect thinking (cause, because, reason, rationale), and so forth.Nov 17 2023 6:44PM
  • Two of the cognitive dimensions included insight or self-reflection words (such as think, realize, believe) and another made up of causal words (such as because, effect, rationale).Nov 17 2023 6:49PM

Chapter 2

  • Content words are words that have a culturally shared meaning in labeling an object or actionNov 17 2023 11:19PM
  • As discussed in the emotion chapter, when English speakers are depressed, they tend to use the word I more in everyday language—apparently because they are paying more attention to themselves. Spanish speakers, when they are depressed, greatly increase in their use of the first-person singular pronoun, yo.Nov 25 2023 2:15AM
  • In a striking series of studies, Stanford’s Lera Boroditsky has demonstrated how the language you are speaking at the time dictates how you remember pictures or events. A bilingual Japanese-English speaker would likely remember the relative status of three other people if introduced to them in Japanese rather than in English. A bilingual Turkish-English speaker will remember my talking about Austin’s weather differently if weNov 25 2023 2:16AM

Chapter 6

  • The language of the student whose father died and of Scrooge points to the type of self-deception associated with the denial or avoidance of emotion. How about the self-deception of overconfidence? There are a number of simple yet fun ways to answer the question. One is to think of common phrases that we all use when we are almost too certain of something versus when we are reasonably certain. For example, the phrase “There is absolutely no doubt that …” would only be used by someone with a tremendous amount of confidence—some might say overconfidence. But the phrase, “There is a possibility that …” would likely be embraced by speakers who are more tentative.Nov 16 2023 1:14PM
  • There is absolutely no doubt that: superficial breathing ensures a superficial experience of ourselves. high definition television is the way to go. all who entered the Summer Holidays Picture Framing Competition produced pieces of an exceptional standard. blackjack is a beatable game [and] you can have an edge over the casino. God will forgive sex before marriage. God’s love for a person is not diminished because of the mistakes that person has made. boxer shorts rule the planet for the ultimate comfort and style. Now crushing the hat industry will be HEAD BOXER HEADWEAR! taking a few minutes to locate the rabbit breeder hobbyists near you is well worth the time. anyone who does hear or read this amazing story will join in the fight to save our Country and our Nation’s Youth.Nov 16 2023 1:14PM
  • There is a possibility that: you could be pregnant. Arrive twenty minutes prior to your appointment time to complete registration. I will be grounded if my parents find out about their car. your former spouse may be entitled to financial information about your spouse from your second marriage in certain circumstances. you may receive this survey from more than one source; if so, I apologize in advance for the duplication.Nov 16 2023 1:14PM
  • In my letters for the students I truly felt would do the best, I tended to: •  Say more, use longer sentences and bigger words. The better I felt they would ultimately perform, the more words I wrote. Longer letters reflect the fact that I had more to say about the student. My sentences were also more complex.Nov 16 2023 1:16PM
  • •  Use fewer positive emotion words. This shocked me. The more potential I believed the student had, the less likely I was to use words like excellent, nice, good, and happy. As I went back to the original letters, the reason became clear. For people best suited for graduate school or a particular job, I tended to give specific examples of their accomplishments. For people not as suited, I tended to wave my hands a bit more and simply say they were great at what they did.Nov 16 2023 1:16PM
  • Provide more detailed information. I noticed that in the stronger letters, I paid more attention to what the students had done rather than just talk about the students themselves. For the promising students, I spent a disproportionate amount of time describing their work and their contribution to whatever projects they worked on. To do this, I used more words that referenced time, space, and motion. Relatively few of my sentences used pronouns like he or she because I was focusing on the projects as opposed to the people.Nov 16 2023 1:16PM
  • Pay little attention to the potential reader of the letter. Recall that the ways people use pronouns reveals where they are paying attention. Apparently, when writing letters for somewhat weaker students, my mind would float to the reader and away from the student. I included phrases like “as you can see from the candidate’s résumé …” or “I’m sure you will agree that …”Nov 16 2023 1:17PM
  • Telling a false story is harder than you might think. A convincing lie requires describing events and feelings that you have not directly experienced. In a sense, you don’t “own” a fictional story in the same way you do a true one.Nov 16 2023 1:20PM
  • However, computer analyses of the two sets of essays revealed a large number of striking differences. First, people writing about their own real traumas simply wrote more words than people writing about imaginary traumas. They were able to supply more details about what they did and didn’t do. They also used first-person singular pronouns more—words such as I, me, and my. Real stories also included fewer emotional words—both positive and negative emotions—than imaginary stories. Finally, the real stories used fewer verbs and cognitive (or thinking) words than the imaginary ones.Nov 16 2023 1:21PM
  • Glass’s real or likely true stories were characterized by the use of the following word categories: •  More words, more details, more numbers •  Fewer emotion (especially positive emotion) and cognitive words •  Fewer verbs •  Fewer self-references: I-words Sound familiar? With the exception of self-references, Glass’s honest stories used language that was similar to people writing about their own traumas. His fabricated stories had virtually identical language fingerprints to the study where students wrote about imaginary traumas.Nov 16 2023 1:23PM
  • When telling the truth about their beliefs, people relied on more self-references, using the word I at much higher rates. When being deceptive about their beliefs, the students expressed more positive emotion.Nov 16 2023 1:26PM
  • Here’s the interesting part of the deal: If you tell him the truth and he believes you are telling the truth, you will receive a $10 bonus. If you lie and he thinks you are telling the truth, you will receive a $50 bonus. However, if he thinks you are lying you will receive no bonus and, in fact, you may be punished by a trip to the Noise Room. The Noise Room is a small dark room where you must sit alone for an hour or so while you listen to occasional bursts of loud noise. In other words, it is to your advantage to try to convince Ekman that you are telling the truth.Nov 16 2023 1:27PM
  • Most striking were the differences in pronoun use. As with most of the other studies, the exonerated defendants used first-person singular pronouns at much higher rates than those found guilty of a felony and perjury. I-words (primarily just the single word I) signaled innocence.Nov 16 2023 1:31PM
  • Interestingly, the truly guilty defendants used third-person pronouns at elevated rates. They were trying to shift the blame away from themselves onto others. Also, as with many of the earlier projects, the truth-tellers used bigger words, described events in greater detail, and evidenced more complex thinking.Nov 16 2023 1:32PM
  • The stories that people generate when telling the truth are generally more complex than false stories. Not only do people say more when telling the truth but each sentence they put together is longer and more complex. Their words are bigger, suggesting that their statements are more precise and nuanced. The statements of truth-tellers also come across as more thoughtful, using insight words such as realize, understand, think, and the like.Nov 16 2023 1:36PM
  • Linguists and philosophers have long been intrigued by a language device called a performative. Performatives are statements about statements. In the statement “I promise you that I did not steal the money,” the phrase “I promise you” is a performative. It is simply claiming “I say to you” or “I am uttering the following words to you.” What is interesting about performative statements is that they cannot be assessed on their truthfulness. In the sentence starting with “I promise you,” the claim “I did not steal the money” is not directly asserted. The truth of the phrase is that the speaker is merely saying that he or she promises that they didn’t steal the money. It’s a fine distinction but one used surprisingly frequently.Nov 17 2023 1:21AM

Chapter 7

  • Whoa. How did the Godfather know that Barzini was the strongman? In the boardroom scene, Barzini appeared more at ease whereas Tattaglia was more rigid and nervous. The language of the two men also differed. Barzini’s dominant pronoun was we, whereas Tattaglia used the word I. The use of we-words is, in fact, a consistent indicator of high status and I-words of lower status. Although Mario Puzo, the author of The Godfather, didn’t know about pronoun research linking we-words to power and status, he intuitively knew how to shape the language of his characters.Nov 17 2023 8:04AM
  • Loudness, for example, is a modest predictor of dominance when people are talking to others who share the same social class. However, when people of different social classes are talking with each other, the person from the lower social class tends to speak more loudly.Nov 17 2023 8:05AM
  • In other words, people’s language changes once they adopt a role. I can’t emphasize enough how important this finding is. Almost every other study that has been conducted with leadership and language was based on people who were already the leaders or who already had high status. This study indicates that the words reflect the leadership role. In other words, most people if thrust into a high-status leadership position will likely start to talk like a leader.Nov 17 2023 8:50AM

Chapter 8

  • This nonverbal mimicking was first thought to reflect how much the two people liked one another. In fact, it is a marker of engagement, or the degree to which the two are paying attention to each other. If you are in love or you are outraged with your conversational partner, the two of you will match each other’s nonverbal actions precisely.Nov 17 2023 12:03PM
  • Imagine, for example, that you were required to answer a series of open-ended essay questions as part of a class assignment. Imagine also that each of the open-ended questions was written in a very different style, ranging from very formal to extremely informal in style. Would you notice the differences in the writing styles of the questions? More important, would you change the ways you answered the questions by adjusting your answers to match each question’s language style? Surprisingly, you would likely not notice the differences in writing styles but you would adjust the style of your answers.Nov 17 2023 12:04PM
  • The tone and direction of a conversation changes drastically as soon as one of the people starts to lie. Jeff Hancock, the Cornell researcher who studies the language of deception, has conducted some experiments that demonstrate thisNov 17 2023 12:10PM
  • We already know that when people lie, their language changes. You might have thought that style matching would drop during the deception topics. In fact, partners’ style matching increased during the deception topics. Yes, the liars’ language changed when they were deceptive but the innocent truth-tellers’ language changed as much or more.Nov 17 2023 12:12PM
  • Think what is happening in this situation. Once the study starts, the innocent partner has already had at least one honest conversation with the person and then, out of nowhere, the other person starts speaking differently. Our brains are highly attentive to change. In this situation, the innocent person is detecting that something is “off” or not making sense. Consequently, he or she starts paying closer attention, resulting in higher style matching. This is clearly not a conscious process because most innocent partners later report that they thought the deceptive conversations seemed normal.Nov 17 2023 12:13PM
  • There is an interesting paradox about LSM. In the case of deceptiveness, one of the speakers—the person who is lying—is actually paying less attention to the other person. Intuitively, you would think that this would result in lower levels of style matching. Apparently when we talk with liars we start paying more attention in an attempt to decode their odd language change. In the case of deception, as one person becomes less attentive, the other becomes more attentive. Surprisingly, this occurs far more frequently than you might think.Nov 17 2023 12:13PM

Chapter 9

  • To get a rough idea of an organization’s climate, they ask employees to talk about their typical workday. If employees refer to “my office” or “my company,” the atmosphere of the workplace is usually fine. People working in these I-companies are reasonably happy but not particularly wedded to the company itself.Nov 17 2023 3:53PM
  • However, if they refer to “our office” or “our company,” pay special attention. Those in we-companies have embraced their workplace as part of their own identities. This sense of we-ness may explain why they work harder, have lower employee turnover, and have a greater sense of fulfillment about their work lives.Nov 17 2023 3:53PM
  • The use of we-words around just one other person often means “you” or “everybody but you.”Dec 22 2023 11:46PM
  • Analyses of commercial airline cockpit recordings have found that poor communication among the flight crew has contributed to over half of all airline crashes in the last century. In some cases, pilots established a toxic atmosphere that discouraged dissent.Dec 22 2023 11:47PM
  • In many ways, a Wikipedia article is really two articles. The casual visitor sees only the final product. However, by clicking on the “discussion” tab, it is possible to find conversations among the various contributors.Dec 23 2023 12:09AM
  • In 2008, my students and I saved copies of all Craigslist ads in thirty different midsize communities across the United States. Because there are so many categories of ads, we only looked at ads for cars, furniture, and roommates. Within each category, we analyzed between six thousand and ten thousand ads and evaluated how people in the different cities used function words. More specifically, we were curious how similarly different communities used pronouns, prepositions, articles, etc.Dec 23 2023 12:10AM
  • In several of the communities, people tended to write their ads using the same language style as their neighbors. In Portland, people generally wrote in a personal style with a slight negative emotional tone. People in Salt Lake City, on the other hand, were exceptionally upbeat in their ads. Although Craigslist writers in Portland and Salt Lake City may have had distinctive styles, within each city, people were thinking about their ads in the same ways. In contrast, residents of Bakersfield, California, and Greensboro, North Carolina, were much more scattershot in their writing styles—meaning some people may have been very formal in their writing and others very informal. They simply didn’t speak with one voice.Dec 23 2023 12:10AM
  • The findings suggested that the more similar the community’s use of language, the more cohesive the city.Dec 23 2023 12:10AM
  • Rather, one of the most striking differences between the two lists is that the most cohesive communities have higher and more equal income distributions than the least cohesive. Using a statistic called a Gini coefficient, demographers can determine the degree to which wealth is spread around in any given city, state, or country. Cities where the residents use language in similar ways tend to be communities that are more similar in terms of their incomes. The bigger the split between the rich and poor of a community, the more varied their writing styles for Craigslist ads.Dec 23 2023 12:11AM
  • Regional differences in the naming of things exist for a large array of foods, objects, and behaviors. If you want a soft drink in the Northeast, you will likely ask for a soda, in the South you will ask for a Coke (meaning any type of soft drink—not just Coca-Cola), and in the Midwest, a pop.Dec 23 2023 12:16AM
  • Depending on where you live, you might refer to that green leafy herb in salsa or Vietnamese pho as cilantro, Mexican parsley, Chinese parsley, or coriander.Dec 23 2023 12:16AM
  • People who think analytically often make distinctions between ideas. In making distinctions, it is necessary to use words such as conjunctions (but, if, or), negations (no, not), and prepositions (with, over). InDec 23 2023 12:18AM

Chapter 10

  • In one of the most impressive books on the psychology of politics, The Political Brain, researcher Drew Westen argues that the most successful politicians are the ones who can emotionally connect with the electorate. Logic, intelligence, and reason are certainly very fine qualities but when the voter enters the ballot box, it is the social and emotional dimensions of the campaign that usually drive the election.Dec 23 2023 6:39PM

Other posts in language-arts