The Secret Life of Pronouns_ What Our Words Say About Us - James W. Pennebaker [89]
HASSELBECK: Because you are an adult and I’m certainly not going to be the person for you to explain your thoughts to. They’re your thoughts. Defend your own insinuations.
O’DONNELL: I defend my thoughts.
HASSELBECK: Defend your own thoughts.
O’DONNELL: Right, but every time I defend them, Elisabeth, it’s poor little Elisabeth that I’m picking on.
HASSELBECK: You know what? Poor little Elisabeth is not poor little Elisabeth.
O’DONNELL: That’s right. That’s why I’m not going to fight with you anymore because it’s absurd. So for three weeks you can say all the Republican crap you want.
HASSELBECK: It’s much easier to fight someone like Donald Trump, isn’t it? Because he’s obnoxious.
O’DONNELL: I’ve never fought him. He fought me. I told a fact about him—
…
HASSELBECK: I gave you an opportunity to clarify.
O’DONNELL: You didn’t give me anything. You don’t have to give me. I asked you a question.
HASSELBECK: I asked you a question.
O’DONNELL: And you wouldn’t even answer it.
HASSELBECK: You wouldn’t even answer your own question.
O’DONNELL: Oh, Elisabeth, I don’t want—You know what? You really don’t understand what I’m saying?
HASSELBECK: I understand what you’re saying.
Obviously, the tone of the interactions between the two lovers and the two adult television hosts is different. Unlike the lovers’ IMs, the women’s sparring resembles a schoolyard fight between two bullies. Despite the striking differences in the two interactions, it is intriguing to see how in both exchanges, the two people converge in their use of words. In both interactions, the two people are completely focused on each other and practically mimic what the other person has just said—one in a loving way, the other in sputtering rage.
Conversations are like dances. Two people effortlessly move in step with one another, each usually anticipating the other person’s next move. If one of the dancers moves in an unexpected direction, the other typically adapts and builds on the new approach. As with dancing, it is often difficult to tell who is leading and who is following in that the two people are constantly affecting each other. And once the dance begins, it is almost impossible for one person to singly dictate the couple’s movement.
In his poem “Among School Children,” William Butler Yeats asks, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” In reading both transcripts, you get the feeling you can’t. You can almost hear the players adjust their speaking rate, tone, and volume. As they both become more emotional, their uses of words converge. Less obvious, however, is their parallel use of function words. That is, both the happy lovers and the angry talk show hosts tend to use pronouns, prepositions, articles, and other function words with each other at almost identical rates. In both interactions, the two people are on the same psychological page and it is reflected in their language.
VERBAL MIMICKING
Social scientists have long known that people in a face-to-face conversation tend to display similar nonverbal behaviors. When one person crosses his or her legs, the other person follows. When one makes a grand hand gesture, the other will likely do the same a bit later. This nonverbal mimicking was first thought to reflect how much the two people liked one another. In fact, it is a marker of engagement, or the degree to which the two are paying attention to each other. If you are in love or you are outraged with your conversational partner, the two of you will match each other’s nonverbal actions precisely.
The same is true for the words used in a conversation. If the two people are talking about the same topic then their words should be similar. After all, that’s what a conversation is. More interesting is that people also converge in the ways they talk—they tend to adopt the same levels of formality, emotionality, and cognitive complexity. In other words, people tend to use the same groups of function words