

Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns - jericsinger
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-language-code&offset=2

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hugh3
There's some interesting gems in here:

 _One of the most interesting results was part of a study my students and I
conducted dealing with status in email correspondence. Basically, we
discovered that in any interaction, the person with the higher status uses
I-words less (yes, less) than people who are low in status. The effects were
quite robust and, naturally, I wanted to test this on myself. I always assumed
that I was a warm, egalitarian kind of guy who treated people pretty much the
same.

I was the same as everyone else. When undergraduates wrote me, their emails
were littered with I, me, and my. My response, although quite friendly, was
remarkably detached -- hardly an I-word graced the page. And then I analyzed
my emails to the dean of my college. My emails looked like an I-word salad;
his emails back to me were practically I-word free._

~~~
dill_day
Interesting, but I think there are some good comments (at the article) too --
pointing out that it also just seems to make sense -- like,

Undergraduates write to professors with singular first person pronouns because
they are often requesting information, or this sort of thing... understandable
then that there's less reason for I, me, and my in the professor's response
(and easy to imagine similar situation in other relationships).

Still, a cool article. Interesting research.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Also, (at least where I'm from) there's an expectation that as an
undergraduate, you'll address professors using proper tone. This way, you end
up writing lots of "I'd like to ask (...)", ", "is it possible for me to",
etc. The writing gets full of fixed-phrases with lots of "I" and "me" - the
author's "I-word salad". And academics I know tend to reply directly, without
any formally required style of writing, so their communcation is more natural.

~~~
wisty
Also, the student is trying to get the professor to understand things from
their perspective. "I am having trouble with ...", "I don't understand why
...". They want the professor to sympathise with their position.

The professor is giving instructions - "you should check the course website
...". They don't care if the students understands their position. They could
try to justify "I can't help you with this, because if I did I would have to
make exceptions for everyone"; but they don't need to.

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ColinWright
I commented when this was submitted yesterday, the bit that struck me was
this:

    
    
       ... we can predict people’s college performance
       reasonably well by simply analyzing their college
       admissions essays. Across four years, we analyzed
       the admissions essays of 25,000 students and then
       tracked their grade point averages (GPAs). Higher
       GPAs were associated with admission essays that
       used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and
       pronouns. The effects were surprisingly strong and
       lasted across all years of college, no matter what
       the students' major.
    

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2895701>

~~~
mrb
What if the same prediction could be made on motivation letters sent by
candidates to potential employers? If I were Google, I would hire this guy. He
would fit perfectly in their candidate selection effort of using automated
tools to process resumes & motivation letters...

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ajuc
I wonder, if they checked some languages that includes pronouns in verbs.

For example in Polish pronouns are mixed with verbs - you say "szła" (she
went), "pójdzie" (he will go) or "idę" (i am going), you can add pronouns "ona
szła", "on pójdzie", "ja idę", but that's only stylistic choice.

Most people rarely use pronouns (it's considered verbose, and sometimes
egocentric to add "ja" (I) when you don't have to).

I suppose in Polish usage of pronouns would not predict anything, because it
is not determined by structure of text (like in English), but by stylistic
choices of speaker.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Ditto in Russian - I suspect this is true of most slavic languages, and if I
had to guess, romantic ones.

(Apparently, one of the hardest things for someone learning Russian from
English is the almost total lack of the verb "be" - you can say "I am." in
Russian, but it's almost a nonsense sentence.)

~~~
wazoox
Pronouns are hardly used in Spanish (in Spain at least "me voy"). They are
optional in Italian too ("sono contento").

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ghotli
I think it's prudent to add to the conversation that the Japanese language has
a rather significant difference in the way that pronouns are used.

"The first person pronouns (e.g. watashi, 私) and second person pronouns (e.g.
anata, 貴方) are used in formal situations. In many sentences, when an English
speaker would use the pronouns "I" and "you", they are omitted in Japanese.
Personal pronouns can be left out when it is clear who the speaker is talking
about."

There are a lot of gems on this wikipedia page that have other interesting
correlations.

Such as: "Social standing also determines how a person refers to themselves,
as well as how a person refers to the person they are talking to."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pronouns>

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espeed
_Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that the ways people used pronouns in
their essays predicted whose health would improve the most. Specifically,
those people who benefited the most from writing changed in their pronoun use
from one essay to another. Pronouns were reflecting people’s abilities to
change perspective._

On my home page the tagline says, "Your perspective guides your thoughts, your
choices, your trajectory." I believe your ability to change perspective is one
of the keys to life so this idea that you can use pronouns as a signal for
one's ability to change perspective is fascinating to me. As Alan Kay was fond
of saying at Xerox PARC, "A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points."

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da_dude4242
>Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that the ways people used pronouns in
their essays predicted whose health would improve the most. Specifically,
those people who benefited the most from writing changed in their pronoun use
from one essay to another. Pronouns were reflecting people’s abilities to
change perspective.

Not surprising if you consider this idea has already been entertained. Freud's
"Ego", "Super Ego", and "Id" are Latin translations for I, We, and It.
Pronouns

Neo-Freudian techniques like Voice Dialogue are training in examining
phenomena from all pronoun perspectives. A training tool for horizontal
perspective fluidity.

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lawlit
Can they analyse the bible ? (or any holy book for that matter)

~~~
mahmud
The Quran uses the royal-we consistently. It's an entirely big fat
condescending lecture cum morality tale.

One of my favorite verses reads "We have created man in the greatest form, we
then made him the most deformed" (speaking of decaying corpse)

لقد خلقنا اﻻنسان في احسن تقويم. ثم رردناه اسفل السافلين

~~~
abdulhaq
No, poor mistranslation there. "We have certainly created man in the best of
stature; Then We return him to the lowest of the low, Except for those who
believe and do righteous deeds, for they will have a reward uninterrupted."
"The Fig" 95:4-6

~~~
mahmud
Thank you for the correction :-)

I'm not a believer but I read the Quran from time to time. Pretty potent
stuff. The imagery is rich!

انا صببنا الماء صبا، ثم شققنا اﻻرض شقا. فأنبتنا فيها حبا، وعنبا وغضبا، وزيتونا
ونخلا

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zemanel
I had noticed in the past that i use 'I' a lot, i do.

~~~
zemanel
post-lunch "let me explain that for you" edit:

Given that i have a self-centered personality, for several reasons, possibly
starting at being an only child, i have noticed on several texts i have
written, like e-mails and other things, that i have a tendency to use the word
"I" a lot, possibly more than required.

Having noticed his, i've done experiences of writing texts, avoiding the "I"
as much as possible and noticed a reasonable change in both communication and
"personal" emotions.

For example, re-phrasing "I believe that ..." to "A possible solution would be
..."

