What your pronouns say about you and power

[Trifoilum]

http://jezebel.com/5906235/what-your-pronouns-say-about-you-and-power


http://www.wnyc.org/npr_articles/2012/apr/30/to-predict-dating-success-the-secrets-in-the-pronouns/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wnyc_home+%28WNYC+New+York+Public+Radio%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

About 20 years ago Pennebaker, who's at the University of Texas at Austin, got interested in looking more closely at the words that we use. Or rather, he got interested in looking more closely at a certain subset of the words that we use: Pennebaker was interested in function words.
For those of you like me — the grammatically challenged — function words are the smallish words that tie our sentences together.
The. This. Though. I. And. An. There. That.
"Function words are essentially the filler words," Pennebaker says. "These are the words that we don't pay attention to, and they're the ones that are so interesting."
According to the way that Pennebaker organizes language, the words that we more often focus on in conversation are content words, words like "school," "family," "live," "friends" — words that conjure a specific image and relay more of the substance of what is being discussed.
"I speak bad Spanish," Pennebaker explains, "and if I'm in a conversation where I'm listening to the other person speak, I am just trying to find out what they are talking about. I am listening to 'what, where, when' — those big content heavy words. All those little words in between, I don't listen to those because they're too complex to listen to."
In fact, says Pennebaker, even in our native language, these function words are basically invisible to us.
"You can't hear them," Pennebaker says. "Humans just aren't able to do it."
But computers can, which is why two decades ago Pennebaker and his graduate students sat down to build themselves a computer program.
The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program that Pennebaker and his students built in the early 1990s has — like any computer program — an ability to peer into massive data sets and discern patterns that no human could ever hope to match.
And so after Pennebaker and his crew built the program, they used it to ask all kinds of questions that had previously been too complicated or difficult for humans to ask.
Some of those questions included:

• Could you tell if someone was lying by carefully analyzing the way they used function words?

• Looking only at a transcript, could you tell from function words whether someone was male or female, rich or poor?

• What could you tell about relationships by looking at the way two people spoke to each other?

Which brings us back to speed dating.
See, one of the things that Pennebaker did was record and transcribe conversations that took place between people on speed dates. He fed these conversations into his program along with information about how the people themselves were perceiving the dates. What he found surprised him.
"We can predict by analyzing their language, who will go on a date — who will match — at rates better than the people themselves," he says.
Specifically, what Pennabaker found was that when the language style of two people matched, when they used pronouns, prepositions, articles and so forth in similar ways at similar rates, they were much more likely to end up on a date.
"The more similar [they were] across all of these function words, the higher the probability that [they] would go on a date in a speed dating context," Pennebaker says. "And this is even cooler: We can even look at ... a young dating couple... [and] the more similar [they] are ... using this language style matching metric, the more likely [they] will still be dating three months from now."
This is not because similar people are attracted to each other, Pennebaker says; people can be very different. It's that when we are around people that we have a genuine interest in, our language subtly shifts.
"When two people are paying close attention, they use language in the same way," he says. "And it's one of these things that humans do automatically."
They aren't aware of it, but if you look closely at their language, count up their use of "I," and "the," and "and", you can see it. It's right there.
Pennebaker has counted words to better understand lots of things. He's looked at lying, at leadership, at who will recover from trauma.
But some of his most interesting work has to do with power dynamics. He says that by analyzing language you can easily tell who among two people has power in a relationship, and their relative social status.
"It's amazingly simple," Pennebaker says, "Listen to the relative use of the word "I."
What you find is completely different from what most people would think. The person with the higher status uses the word "I" less.
To demonstrate this Pennebaker pointed to some of his own email, a batch written long before he began studying status.
First he shares an email written by one of his undergraduate students, a woman named Pam:

Dear Dr. Pennebaker:
I was part of your Introductory Psychology class last semester. I have enjoyed your lectures and I'velearned so much. I received an email from you about doing some research with you. Would there be a time for me to come by and talk about this?
Pam
​

Now consider Pennebaker's response:

Dear Pam -
This would be great. This week isn't good because of a trip. How about next Tuesday between 9 and 10:30. It will be good to see you.
Jamie Pennebaker
​

Pam, the lowly undergraduate used "I" many times, while Pennebaker didn't use it at all.
Now consider this email Pennebaker wrote to a famous professor.

Dear Famous Professor:
The reason I'm writing is that I'm helping to put together a conference on [a particular topic]. I have been contacting a large group of people and many have specifically asked if you were attending. I would absolutely love it if you could come... I really hope you can make it.
Jamie Pennebaker
​

And the return email from famous professor:

Dear Jamie -
Good to hear from you. Congratulations on the conference. The idea of a reunion is a nice one ...and the conference idea will provide us with a semi-formal way of catching up with one another's current research... Isn't there any way to get the university to dig up a few thousand dollars to defray travel expenses for the conference?
With all best regards,
Famous Professor
​

Pennebaker says that when he encountered these emails he was shocked to find that he himself obeyed this rule. He says he thought of himself as a very egalitarian person, and assumed he would never talk to people differently because of their status.
But in retrospect he says it makes sense. We use "I" more when we talk to someone with power because we're more self-conscious. We are focused on ourselves - how we're coming across - and our language reflects that.
So could we use these insights to change ourselves? Like Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady, could we bend our personalities by bending the words we use? Could we become stronger? More powerful? Healthier?
After 20 years of looking at this stuff, Pennebaker doubts it.
"The words reflect who we are more than drive who we are," he says.
You can't, he believes, change who you are by changing your language; you can only change your language by changing who you are. He says that's what his research indicates.
Pennebaker has collected some of this research in a book called The Secret Life of Pronouns, but says he feels the practice of using computers to count and categorize language is really just a beginning.
It's like we just invented the telescope, he tells me, and there are a million new places to look.

What do you think?

As a non-English native speaker, there are certain awareness regarding vocabulary and word usage I have that....sometimes made me more aware of this sort of thing. I said somewhere here that ....at times, using 'I' too much can feel a LOT like self-grandeur, or at least it's all about me and me and me and me and moi.

Also, do you think this should be on Writing and Languages, or Psychology and MBTI? :|

 

[knight in battle]

I'm speechless. I guess I do use 'I' a lot in writing, especially when I feel like I am being judged for what I am writing.

Hmm. There were 6 "I's" in the previous sentence.

 

[hush]

As a non-English native speaker, there are certain awareness regarding vocabulary and word usage I have that....sometimes made me more aware of this sort of thing. I said somewhere here that ....at times, using 'I' too much can feel a LOT like self-grandeur, or at least it's all about me and me and me and me and moi.

Ugh, I always get this feeling. Often it's appropriate for the discussion at hand, but when I use "I, me," etc. too much, yeah... I definitely get this feeling, but never when others do the same (I don't think anything of it or notice it when there happens to be a lot of 1st person pronouns in someone's writing).

 

[5r6jhd]

Ugh, I always get this feeling. Often it's appropriate for the discussion at hand, but when I use "I, me," etc. too much, yeah... I definitely get this feeling, but never when others do the same (I don't think anything of it or notice it when there happens to be a lot of 1st person pronouns in someone's writing).

Well, he said that the use of "I" frequently has a lot to do with self conciousness, so of course you are going to notice and possibly worry about it when you catch yourself at it. I (harharhar) feel the same.

I would agree with the article as I've definitely noticed a lot of that in my own speech (and also mannerisms!). I've met a lot of new people in the last couple of years, and I always seem to change slightly when talking to different new people. It's fascinating.

 

[Elis]

I usually use the word I to make clear that I'm talking about my opinion, and not some general thought or objective fact. I don't like that it makes me sound so egocentric though, although I probably am.

 

[Trifoilum]

On another hand....
http://jezebel.com/5908736/there-is...ld-than-talking-about-yourself?tag=narcissism

Harvard psychologists have found that people are so desperate to share random bits of information about themselves (their habits, their likes and dislikes, what, all bullshit aside, they really think of Girls), they are willing to give up ACTUAL FREE MONEY to do it. As mentioned here, in the LA Times, authors Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell recently devised a series of five experiments to determine whether the process of disclosing one's own thoughts was intrinsically rewarding.

It's actually interesting if this is indeed, true; how the use of pronouns indicate our perceived position, and our need for gratification.

Is it perhaps possible that we uses 'I' to please ? or to gratify ourselves?
Or perhaps it is a more sinister matter; we were threatened?
and using 'I' were a subconscious attempt to both strengthen our position, -and- entertain ourselves in that dire times, like a drop of water in the desert?

There are differences in the words we used;
saying 'You' all the time can be accusing; on the other hand it can sound empathic, sound like the speaker is focusing the attention to the listener / the 'you' in question.
saying 'I' all the time can be narcissistic; on the other hand, people here have stated that yes, we're using 'I' for explaining our intentions, opinions, thoughts; knowledge. With that, typically the sentence become more subjective, less objective; less 'existing and just proclaimed', more 'perceived and being stated'.
using 'us', and 'they', can be 'othering'; creating separations. On the other hand, it can engage and disengage the listeners, for good or bad reasons.

It's probable that most political speaker would have known this.

But what does it say about the way we shape the knowledge we have?

Will shaping the knowledge we had into a subjective sentence...
.....weakened/strengthened its power?
.....made it more/less open?
.....made it more/less certain?
.....made it more/less personal?
.....engaged/disengaged its listener?
.....do something else?
And again, why? What does it say about us, about people?


(notice how 'I' as it should be used has never been used once in this post. Yes, it's intentional; and question; how does it sound like? )

 

[Gaze]

@Trifoilum - By not using I, your comments appeared more authoritative. This gave it a higher, less subjective tone. Which is what academics, professionals, are taught to do. As an instructor, stating something without using I indicates that what is stated is a fact, not a feeling or opinion. I is considered a non-scientific pronoun. It suggests an individual view. It indicates what's true for me or "I" may not be true for everyone else. When something is certain, we use more pronouns such as there, this, that, it, etc.

In my writing, I tend to overuse "I think" to express a personal point of view with uncertainty or to express that I am open to other ways of viewing something. This is contrary to the cultural use of I in North American culture. I notice that people use "I" assertively to express a certain stance or position they hold, clearly or strongly. So, there are cultural differences in the use of "I".

 

[jyrffw54]

I use "I" alot, and if I am teaching someone about something, I use "you" to help them feel more engaged/attended to.

My favourite pronouns are "we" and "us". They have a beautiful depth and gravity to them.

 

[Radiantshadow]

Engaging with others usually demands plurality for a sense of unity. When alone or in private, you don't need it. Though, I admit to using raw abstraction over localization in either case.

It can be a useful correlation but more information than simple diction would be needed to characterize someone, imo. Expression is like handwriting in that it depends on the weather. Still, fun thing to spot in others.

 

[jupiterswoon]

This article is definitely very illuminating. It's funny because I have been thinking about this on and off for awhile- for a long time I used to say "I feel" or "I could see that" and I think in my case that it's (let's be honest) probably a mixture of not having a better response lined up, perhaps a bit of narcissism, mixed with openly showing that "my" ideas are subjective, because they are mine. The points that everyone has made are all excellent and all seem partially responsible for over-use of the word "I".

I like what Radiant Shadow wrote, that plurality is more necessary for something to be universally understood. My partner- when talking in general terms always uses the word "you" and I always assume that he is talking about me specifically.

I took a listening class in college (I know, right) and part of the key to speech is when talking about something objectively to use the term "one". Perhaps if "one" replaces "I" then that narcisstic/self-conscious/subjective aspect will disappear.

"I" might adopt that use myself.

 

[jupiterswoon]

When using the word "one" in a sentence, it also has that dignified almost British aristocratic air about it.

"One would get great results, if one would focus one's abilities."

See, that sounds classy.

 

[Trifoilum]

When using the word "one" in a sentence, it also has that dignified almost British aristocratic air about it.

"One would get great results, if one would focus one's abilities."

See, that sounds classy.

I tend to use one myself, in the meaning of 'someone', or like 'they' but singular.
And yes, sounds..classy. I just realized this! xD