The Secret Life of Pronouns_ What Our Words Say About Us - James W. Pennebaker [10]
Finally, this book is a travelogue of the journey my students, colleagues, and I have been taking as we’ve been studying the ways we all use language. The values guiding most of this research have been curiosity and playfulness. If you are a serious linguist, this book may disappoint or infuriate you. If you love words for their own sake, I may not share your reverence. (Indeed, after I published a paper showing that suicidal poets used pronouns differently from nonsuicidal poets, a slightly inebriated poet threatened me with a butter knife at a party in my own home.) Ultimately, I’m interested in psychology and social behavior. Words, in my world, are a window into the inner workings of people, a fascinating and revealing way to think about language and its links to the world around us all.
CHAPTER 2
Ignoring the Content, Celebrating the Style
ALL WORDS ARE not equal. In any given sentence, some words provide basic content and meaning whereas others serve quieter support functions. Ironically, the quiet words can say more about a person than the more meaningful ones. A central theme of this book is that the content of speech can be distinguished from the style of speech. Further, words that reflect language style can reveal aspects of people’s personality, social connections, and psychological states.
This chapter lays out the overall logic of word analysis. It serves as the foundation for the rest of the book. If you simply want to see how different types of words reflect personality, deception, and psychological state, feel free to skip this chapter. You may well regret it. But then you will never know.
IT’S HELPFUL TO start with a simple exercise to give you a feeling about the ways different words work. Look closely at the picture on the next page. Who are the people? What is happening? What are their thoughts, feelings, and concerns?
How would you write or talk about this drawing? Stop for a second and describe the picture to yourself. You might even jot down your description on a piece of paper so that you can refer back to your writing throughout the chapter.
In fact, thousands of people have written about this picture as part of various psychology experiments. The kinds of stories that people tell vary widely. Some view the people as two women, others as one or two men. Some cast the two as part of a story dealing with good versus evil, wisdom versus youth, or just a family relationship between people of different generations.
Despite the differences in stories and themes, the ways people write their stories are even more striking. As an example, read the first sentences that three college students wrote in describing the picture:
PERSON 1: In the aforementioned picture an elderly woman is about to speak to a middle aged woman who looks condescending and calculating.
PERSON 2: I see an old woman looking back on her years remembering how it was to be beautiful and young.
PERSON 3: The old woman is a witch or something. She looks kinda like she is coaxing the young one to do something.
Now look more closely at each person’s writing. Can you get a sense of who each of these three people is? Who would you like to get coffee with? Which one do you trust the most? What factors influenced your answers? Although all three students saw the same drawing, they interpreted it differently. More important, however, is how they used words to describe their impressions. Even in these brief sentences, you get a sense of who these students are. The first person appears stiff and distant, relying on large words in a self-conscious way. The second has a more personal and warmer touch. The third person sounds more casual than the other two and seems not to be taking the assignment as seriously.
All three people have stamped part of their personality into their writing style. Through their largely unconscious use of words, we can begin to get