The Secret Life of Pronouns_ What Our Words Say About Us - James W. Pennebaker [46]
A second way to capture the themes most important to people is to watch how they guide the conversation. Years ago, I had dinner with two old friends—one who is an insightful clinical psychologist and the other an architect. In the middle of the conversation, the clinician casually noted to the architect, “It sounds like you are having some financial problems.” The architect was stunned by the clinician’s out-of-the-blue comment. But then he painfully admitted that he had recently lost his life savings due to a risky investment. I was surprised myself by the clinician’s comment because there was nothing I could discern in the conversation that hinted at the financial problems of my other friend.
Afterward, I asked the clinician what made him think that our friend had financial difficulties. He laughed because in his mind, it was obvious. Several times during the meal, the architect would change the conversational topic—and it always had something to do with money, some kind of financial loss, or investments. Neither the architect nor I saw the regularity of his switching topics. Indeed, I’ve since learned that when someone changes the conversational direction, it serves as a powerful marker of what is on his or her mind.
ANALYZING OUR WORDS TO KNOW OURSELVES BETTER
If you had access to all the words you used in a day, what could you learn about yourself? Through my language research, I’ve been able to answer the question for myself. And, at least for me, it has been quite helpful.
One way my laboratory team studies natural language is to record everyday speech in children, college students, married couples, and the elderly. One of my former graduate students, Matthias Mehl, was instrumental in developing a recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder, or EAR. The EAR is a digital recorder that is programmed to come on for about thirty seconds once every twelve to fourteen minutes over the course of several days. Matthias, who is now an internationally respected researcher, spent thousands of hours perfecting the EAR so that it could withstand the punishment from its wearers.
Part of the testing phase was to ask all the members of my research team to wear the EAR for a few days and then transcribe everything that was recorded on it. I have now done this myself several times. The first weekend I wore the EAR, my son was about twelve years old. In my own mind, that weekend was uneventful—chores, a family outing somewhere, the usual. A couple of days later, I transcribed my EAR recording and was distressed to see the way I spoke to my son. My tone was often cool and detached—matching his own aloofness (or was he matching my own aloofness)? In our interactions, I used big words, high rates of articles, relatively few pronouns—especially I-words. With my wife and daughter, my language was more warm and approachable.
The experience of hearing my tone of voice and seeing my own words on paper had a profound effect on me. Thereafter, I made a conscious attempt to be warmer and more psychologically available to my son. Note that I did not make a conscious effort to change my pronouns and articles. Rather, I changed my behavior and attitudes with the assumption that my function words would follow.
Over the years, I have also analyzed my language in e-mails, classroom lectures, professional articles, and letters of recommendation. Sometimes my language behaves in predictable ways; sometimes it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, I learn something about myself. Indeed, it is always most striking to see those instances when my own view of myself doesn’t match the ways I’m objectively behaving. It also raises the question of what should I do—change the way I view myself, change my behaviors, or change my language.
And this brings