The Secret Life of Pronouns_ What Our Words Say About Us - James W. Pennebaker [17]
Function words also reflect and color subtle ways we think about objects and events in our lives. With prepositions and other function words, as with articles and pronouns, we are able to make linguistic shifts as quickly as we can speak. It’s hard to imagine stopping a conversation in midsentence to decide whether you should say “I went to my friend’s house” versus “I went over to my friend’s house” versus “I went by my friend’s house.” The differences among to, over to, and by are almost imperceptible to the listener but they all have a slightly different meaning about the trip or the friend or the friend’s house.
As a final note, we are not capable of easily controlling how and when we use function words. They are hard for us to perceive in others and to control in ourselves. They are processed in our brains extremely quickly and efficiently. All the time, our brain is remembering recent references to a person or object so that we can use the right pronouns and articles in the next sentence.
BEYOND ENGLISH: FUNCTION WORDS AS CULTURAL CLUES
Every language must be able to distinguish between “a table” and “the table,” between “she” and “he,” and between “going to a store” and “going by a store.” In some languages these distinctions are signaled by separate function words and in others, they are added to a surrounding noun or verb. The ways that function words are used differ by culture and often tell us something about the culture itself.
In our research on function words, my students, colleagues, and I have developed the LIWC computer program for use with a number of languages, including Spanish, German, Arabic, Italian, French, Russian, Dutch, Chinese, and others. So far, virtually all the language links to social and psychological phenomena we have found in English have generalized to other languages. In developing cross-language text analysis programs, we come across unique issues every time we begin exploring a new language.
Pronoun Dropping
In some languages, separate words for pronouns are rarely used. In Spanish, for example, estoy triste literally means “am sad.” The word “I” is not needed since the personal pronoun is implicit in the verb conjugation. Of course, a speaker could say “Yo estoy triste,” which would be the equivalent of “I am sad,” with a strong emphasis on the word I. 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.
Why do some cultures drop personal pronouns and others don’t? One argument is that languages from more tightly knit collectivist cultures tend to drop pronouns, whereas the more individualist societies retain them.
Status Markers in Language
Most languages are constructed to identify who in a conversation has greater status or respect. In Old English, our linguistic ancestors distinguished between you and thou. By the late eighteenth century, the formal and informal distinction was disappearing. Most European languages still use formal and informal versions of the pronoun you, although the distinction is becoming less common. Other languages, such as Japanese, signal relative status in the conjugation of verbs and other words. Indeed, it is almost impossible to say “I spoke with you about the car” without signaling the relative status of the speaker and addressee.
Direct Versus Indirect Knowledge
Some languages, such as Turkish, require you to provide evidence for any statement you make. If I said to you “It was very hot in Austin yesterday” in English, you would likely shrug your shoulders and assume that I’m telling you the truth. In Turkish, however, you would use different forms of the verb “was” to denote whether I personally experienced the hot weather or am simply relaying this information from some other source.
Social Knowledge Lost in