The Secret Life of Pronouns_ What Our Words Say About Us - James W. Pennebaker [14]
Perhaps the strongest test of invisibility is in actively trying to listen to people’s use of style versus content words. Sit by a television or radio or simply begin listening to people speaking around you. Consciously try to attend to style-related words. You will note that they are spoken extremely quickly—lingering, on average, for less than two-tenths of a second. In fact, this speed is often used in psychology experiments to present words or pictures that are just barely perceptible. Assuming you are able to pay attention to these words for a few minutes, you will find that you lose track of what the content of the conversation is. It is almost impossible to attend to function words on their own.
THE AMAZING CASE OF JOHN KERRY AND HIS INVISIBLE PRONOUNS
In the 2004 presidential campaign, Democrat John Kerry was running for president against the incumbent George W. Bush. In the months running up to the election, Bush’s popularity ratings were suffering and Kerry posed a serious threat. A recurring problem with Kerry, however, was that he came across as aloof and somewhat arrogant. When he spoke, his body language was rigid and standoffish. His speeches and interviews tended to sound wooden and inauthentic.
According to a New York Times article, in an attempt to appear more warm, Kerry’s advisers were working with him to use we-words (e.g., we, us, our) more and I-words less. On reading the article, it was clear that Kerry was in trouble.
As will be detailed later, use of I-words is associated with being honest and personal, and when politicians use them, we-words sound cold, rigid, and emotionally distant. At the time, Kerry was already using we-words at twice the rate of Bush and I-words at half Bush’s rate. Kerry’s advisers, who were some of the smartest people in the country, failed to understand how invisible stealth words worked.
This should be an important lesson. Function words are almost impossible to hear and your stereotypes about how they work may well be wrong.
Another surprising aspect of stealth words is that they are very hard to master after about age twelve. Learning another language as an adult is usually quite difficult. However, most people can quickly learn the words for objects, numbers, and colors. They can also memorize the words for, in, above, with, and related words. But mastering the use of most common function words in an ongoing conversation is far more difficult. In fact, you can usually tell if someone is not a native English speaker by looking at their writing. Their errors will likely be in their use of style words rather than any nouns or regular verbs.
STYLE WORDS AND THE BRAIN
The distinction between style and content words can also be seen in people who suffer from brain damage. Occasionally, a person will have a stroke or other brain injury that affects a highly specific location on the left side of the brain. If it is in one area, the person can lose the ability to use content words but still retain the ability to use function words. Strokes in other areas can produce the opposite results.
The two brain areas of interest—Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area—are usually located on the outer surface of the left side of the brain, called the cerebral cortex.
Broca’s area, named after the nineteenth-century French surgeon Paul Broca, is located in the frontal lobe. In the 1860s, Broca published a series of articles reporting that damage to Broca’s area was often associated with patients speaking in a painfully slow and disconnected way. More striking, however, is that they often were unable to