The Secret Life of Pronouns_ What Our Words Say About Us - James W. Pennebaker [116]
One of the best-known early forensic linguists is Donald Foster, a professor of English at Vassar College. Using a mixture of computer and deductive skills, along with a broad knowledge of history and literature, Foster has worked with law enforcement agencies on high-profile cases such as the Unabomber, the 2001 anthrax attacks, and the 1997 JonBenét Ramsey murder case. He has also applied his methods to determine the authenticity of some works by Shakespeare and others. Perhaps his most successful venture was in identifying Joe Klein as the author of an anonymously published satirical novel on the Clinton presidency, Primary Colors.
Foster has been a controversial figure because several of his high-profile claims about authorship have not panned out. He has also been less than forthcoming about the details of his methods of author identification, something that reflects his training in English rather than statistics and science. Nevertheless, Foster’s approach has alerted the literary and forensic worlds to the promise of computer-based methods to identify authors and their work.
FINDING THE TELLS
World-class poker players closely watch and listen to their opponents in attempts to predict the cards they may be holding. Often players will pretend they have a poor set of cards when they have a good set; other times they will bluff by giving the impression they have a winning hand when they don’t. Experts look for telling signs of deception—or “tells.” Some players avoid looking around the table, others tap their feet, yet others talk more loudly. The ability to decipher tells can give card players a large advantage in high-stakes poker games.
There are various types of tells in people’s use of written language as well. Two are particularly good clues in identifying authors: function words and punctuation. This can be seen in looking back at the blogs we collected in 2001 as part of the September 11 project discussed in the last chapter. Recall that we saved about seventy blog entries from each of a thousand people in the two months before and after the 9/11 attacks. Every few years, my students and I revisit LiveJournal.com to see if the same people are still posting. Ten years later, 25 to 30 percent are still active. About 25 percent have erased their accounts. The remainder stopped posting, on average, five years after the attacks, in 2006. Many of the former posters migrated to other systems such as Facebook or Twitter.
Simply reading the last ten years of people’s posts provides an intimate picture of their lives. Not unlike Michael Apted’s Seven Up! documentary series, we have been able to track the unfolding experiences of the bloggers as they grow older. Many of the same issues still drive the authors. Even though some have now married, had children, and started careers, recurring insecurities, motives, and goals keep returning. Those who were happy and upbeat in 2001 tend to be the same optimistic people nine years later. For example, a young father writes in a random blog in 2001 about his favorite hockey team:
lucky lucky chicken bone. i shall do the happy-cup-dance. we shall win. we shall triumph. and there will be much rejoicing! i just need to get cable first. ok. i wasn’t just gonna post about hockey, but yvonne’s ready to go. yeah. shut up. you try resisting that sweet, sweet candeh.
And nine years later, you see the same person:
My first attempt at making salsa was, in my humble opinion, not too shabby. protip: don’t use Roma tomatoes. I’m not sure why the hell I thought they’d work out fine, but I was terribly wrong. Ok, not terribly just mildly. ah, salsa humor. I’m heading back to the mexi-mart today to pick up the goods to try another batch. Maybe i’ll have it done in time for the bbq. Who knows? Since my catharsis, I’ve been in an amazing headspace.
Obviously, these two writing samples are from