

The way people copy each other's linguistic style reveals their pecking order - pg
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27437/#.TwCoUmRdUnU.twitter

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kevinalexbrown
I found the following somewhat funny given that this article discusses pecking
orders and linguistic choices:

This was submitted 2 weeks ago [1], with the title "Computer Scientists Create
Algorithm That Measures Human Pecking Order", which is appended to the main
title for the article. (reached 48 points)

pg has resubmitted this 2 weeks later, using the subtitle of the article, "The
way people copy each other's linguistic style reveals their pecking order."
(so far 96 points)

Now I'm not nitpicking about credit, I don't care. My question is to what
degree is this submission getting more traction from pg's status, and to what
degree is it getting more traction due to the linguistic choice of a more
specific, better(?) title?

I'd say pg, at least here on HN, is higher up in the pecking order than the
person who submitted the article first (llambda).

On the other hand, the subtitle is certainly more descriptive, since computer
scientists have been making algorithms to measure human pecking orders for a
while, with large companies seeking to build brand confidence by giving away
their products to "influential individuals", etc.

This is different than the effect described in the article. The original
article contrasts their new work with previous approaches that focus on
structural/network effects: who's talking to whom, etc.

I guess what spiked my interest is that your power and/or reputation still
affect the linguistic choice of whether to respond at all.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3385517>

~~~
mechanical_fish
The earlier submission appears to be from Christmas Eve, when the entire world
was on a weekend and most English-speaking countries were either _on_ a major
holiday or preparing for its imminent arrival. This submission was late on New
Years Day in the USA, at a time when much of the world was already halfway
through Monday, January 2. (I believe this was submitted at noon on Monday
Sydney time, for example.)

That's just one of many alternative hypotheses to explain the difference in
traffic. Obviously, there's also a raft of "competitive" hypotheses: Articles
on HN don't sink or swim in a vacuum, they have to compete with the other
articles on the site at any given moment.

------
bluishgreen
When I talk to people who have language problems (I was a TA at a US
university, so I meet a diverse set of language skill levels in my students),
I notice that I sometimes copy the amount of broken-ness in their language
(involuntarily). This is not in a condescending way, because I can sense they
become comfortable at once. To understand this in a different way, try to
imagine one person speaking broken English and the other person just
completely keeping up his fast fluent pace in all his replies. That would seem
pretty rude.

What I wanted to get at is this, pecking order might not be the only reason to
copy verbal styles. Empathy might be one more reason. Does this study control
for this?

~~~
omegant
I am Spanish and my English is good but not perfect. Any way when I find
myself talking English close to people who´s English is worst than mine, I
change my pronunciation to one much less accurate (almost Spanish
pronunciation of English words). I just don´t feel confortable pronouncing
properly (well kind off properly) in that situation, I just hide my ability.
(maybe to avoid the mythical Spanish envy?).

~~~
hessenwolf
It's also a lot easier to understand. I am constantly asking my German
colleagues to pronounce that word 'as if they were imitating my accent', so I
can get some idea of the spelling, and not just a smudge of weird consonants.

~~~
wazoox
I cannot actually speak German, but isn't German relation of pronunciation to
spelling much clearer than in English (for which it's notoriously intractable,
see the famous "ghoti" joke)?

~~~
hessenwolf
Yes, it's phairly phonetic, but there are a few different 'h', 'ch', and 'k'
sounds that were initially completely undistinguishable to my ears.

------
thesash
It would be fascinating to analyze this in verbal communication. I've thought
about this in the past, specifically in how idiomatic expressions, "inside
jokes" and the like are disseminated through social groups. It always seems
that certain individuals in a group are responsible for setting the tone and
style of humor and colloquial expression, while the rest end up mimicing the
leaders.

In a more practical sense, simply being able to recognize these signals would
be very valuable in meetings, especially sales meetings involving pitching a
group when it is unclear who the actual decision makers are.

~~~
noahc
The article mostly talks about structural words. The real breakthrough is that
they provide a lot of clues into our very being. We can predict lying, age,
gender, and power using them. For those interested in this it would be worth
checking out The Secret Life of Pronouns[1]

Your second paragraph talks about being able to notice these things in
meetings. Penbrooke's research[1] shows that our brains ignore structural
words. So it's pretty impossible to take advantage of this particular
research.

However, I think there are a few things you can do.

1\. You're first paragraph about "inside jokes" is spot on. When I was in
college it was pretty common to to get what were called "Dorm Floor" shirts.
The front had some slogan or name on them and the back had quotes from your
dorm floor. When we went to create ours there were three of us who dominated
the floor quotes. So they made a limit for how many quotes a person could
have. Most of these quotes were essentially inside jokes.

If you want to know where you stand in a group it's pretty easy to test this
using inside jokes. Can you start something? If they respect you they will
pick up your inside joke.

2.When I was in college, I took a lot of discussion based classes related to
political theory. I noticed my self picking up the mannerisms of a kid in my
class. I then realized that others were too. This was a huge eye opening
experience for me. I realized that mannerism and the way we speak is organic
and if we can record it's evolution it tells us something about how power and
society works.

The down side of this is that in a meeting you don't see the birth of the
mannerism so you don't know who the decision makers are. You also can't
mentally process the structural words, so I don't think there's much advantage
there.

[1]<http://secretlifeofpronouns.com/>

~~~
rdtsc
I have noticed the copying of mannerisms as well in college. I didn't know
about all this research.

But then I decided to play along and started to pick professors and copy their
mannerisms and verbal style on purpose. So on week I would talk and act like a
math professor, then like the physics one. I didn't do it in an overt,
derogatory, or offensive, but in a subtle way. Doubt anyone even noticed. It
was interesting that it was easier to copy from those that I respected and
looked up to. some that I didn't care about just came harder to do.

------
entangld
James Pennebaker wrote about this in "The Secret Life of Pronouns". It was a
good book released late last year.

He also does twitter stream analysis using his research and you can find that
here --> <http://analyzewords.com>

People might dismiss it as tripe, but after you've read some of his assertions
and look over your own emails you'll probably believe it makes a bit of sense.

~~~
gruseom
I thought Pennebaker found an absolute correlation between status and pronoun
usage (e.g. higher-status uses "we" more than lower-status), where this work
seems to be about relative patterns between individuals.

~~~
entangld
He didn't really have a definite pattern for higher status except they used
more articles, however lower status used more "I"s.

Yet later in the book he also mentioned mirrored language and who reflects
who. He also had some sort of web program that measured the difference between
the two. I think that correlates with the goals of this study.

------
chrislloyd
Direct link to the paper: <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.3670v1>

------
jroseattle
It's interesting that linguistic co-ordination is being used to determine
"pecking order". Maybe so, but I observe things a bit differently.

I grew up in a part of the country that was mostly rural, toward the
midwest/southeast part of the US. I was raised believing that "y'all" was a
label for referencing a group of people.

I no longer live in this part of the country, but return from time to time for
family. Re-connecting with family and friends, my wife will notice that I
start to sound like everyone with whom we're surrounded (she kindly refers to
this as my "inner hick".)

If this is true (I assume it is), it is completely sub-conscious. If there is
anything I'm consciously doing, it is attempting to bridge any perceived gap
in communication.

In terms of pecking order, it may be the case that I'm conforming to my
surroundings. I tend to think of it more as "when in Rome".

I don't care for the value judgment implied by the term "pecking order", as it
denotes that someone is in control or holds more influence. Communication
carries an underlying intent, a reason for the communication to occur in the
first place. Linguistic analysis can measure syntax and output, but it doesn't
measure intent. And intent is important to understanding the value of
communication.

When the Google guys came up with PageRank, the assumption was that the intent
of including a link was to point to a more credible source. As we now know,
assuming the intent of a website to link to another as a means of assessing
credibility is flawed.

------
FreakLegion
Very interesting. At first blush (based on the title and first bit of the
article) I wanted to offer an alternative explanation, something like:

1\. People make sense of things through language. (You can get this sentiment
in sound-bite form from any number of linguists or language philosophers, e.g.
Wittgenstein's "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.")

2\. People with more linguistic resources are better able to make sense of
things, and thus tend to rise to the top of the pecking order. (N.B.: Language
is more than just words, so this isn't simply an issue of vocabulary.)

3\. People with fewer linguistic resources are drawn to the expressions of
people with more linguistic resources because those expressions give them new
ways to make sense of things. They're like design patterns for thought.

4\. Thus, what's being measured isn't power or influence, at least not
directly.

But of course _none of this is relevant to the article_ , which draws its
conclusions from the degree of periphrasis in a discussion, rather than the
substance of what is said. So, again, very interesting.

~~~
Qz
_4\. Thus, what's being measured isn't power or influence, at least not
directly._

I'm with you until this because it doesn't seem to draw from points 1-3.

~~~
FreakLegion
Yeah, that could be clearer. What initially struck me, before I'd finished
reading the article, was the impending sense of post hoc ergo propter hoc. So
my response, at that point, was to invert the relationship between copying and
pecking order: a) "pecking order is an effect of copying" vs. b) "copying is
an effect of pecking order."

If b) is the case then it makes sense to frame the issue as "The way people
copy each other's linguistic style reveals their pecking order." But if a) is
the case then the article's conclusion is tautological. Of course you're right
that that doesn't stop us from taking it as a direct measure of power or
influence, since they're still strongly correlated. I was just thinking of it
more as a measure of linguistic reserves [1].

[1] <http://goo.gl/NOUwo> (Sorry to use a link shortener, but it's a long
Google Books URL.)

~~~
ximeng
[http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=6Buf_AlaadwC&lpg=PA3...](http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=6Buf_AlaadwC&lpg=PA32&ots=OTaAn2AT6c&dq=%22linguistic+reserves%22&pg=PA31&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22in%20parallel%20with%20kafka%22&f=false)

HN shortens automatically...

------
bane
It's interesting, I would have thought something different. I'd have thought
that people who are more capable of adapting to the communication style of
their peers had a subtle advantage (though that may not reveal pecking order).

I've always thought of a person that can hold a high level, technical
conversation one moment, then adjust their vocabulary and speaking style to
communicate with some neighborhood children the next, then adopt a pidgin to
communicate better when dealing with a non-native speaking friend, then switch
to a local drawl when getting their car fixed by the local mechanic, to have a
special sort of power w/r to communicating effectively with their audience.

People who don't seem capable of adjusting their patterns based on audience
seem more..."brittle" somehow.

------
WildUtah
I still think this is the major effect that makes it harder for adults to
learn a foreign language. Brain chemistry changes a little between child and
adult but your resistance to social inferiority signals changes a lot.

If you can reach a zen state of submission to the ocean of expression around
you and follow the currents, you could learn like a child again. That's dang
hard to do.

------
anghyflawn
While it is always nice to have harder proof than is usual in the humanities
and to a lesser degree social sciences, I feel mildly irritated by the
coverage which presents this as a "discovery" by clever tech people. These
facts are pretty basic in sociolinguistics, the study of discourse, psychology
of language etc., as amply acknowledged in the paper itself.

------
listening
And linguistic style reflects how a person thinks (so the theory goes). So
when you mimic someone's linguistic style, you may find yourself succumbing to
their way of thinking.

The theory continues that different programming languages reflect different
linguistic styles and thus your choice of programming language can affect the
way you think.

As an example, I do a large amount of text processing work using sed.
Interestingly (imo), sed is a language designed by someone who had a degree in
Psychology.

As a result, to some extent my way of thinking would probably differ from
someone who uses, e.g., Perl as their preferred language for processing text.

~~~
5teev
Or vice-versa, i.e., one's thinking style affects one's choice of programming
language. I believe this is why some programming languages just never clicked
with me. My brain definitely resisted Perl...at first....

~~~
listening
No doubt. But would you agree that the more you use someone else's language,
the more your thinking adapts to their way of thinking, as evidenced in how
they designed the language?

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statictype
I've actually observed this many times, having lived for quite some time in
America and now quite some time in India - not just with linguistic style but
also with accent (when the people talking to each other cross geographic
boundaries).

So over the years, I've internally made a (somewhat silly) point to be aware
of this and _not_ try and change the way I speak based on whom I'm speaking
too.

------
abahgat
I'd be curious to know how much of this applies to non-native English
speakers. I guess their native language can shape the way they build sentences
and influence the way they communicate in different way. Or, maybe, they just
attempt to correlate more with native English speakers.

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gruseom
What kind of status are we talking here? Social standing? Authority role?
Charisma? Persuasion?

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ouroboros
ah, that explains why both my manager, his manager and the team's group
manager keep making the "... is is that" mistake. I'm a poor ESL guy, and my
grammar parsing brain paths get fizzed whenever I hear them speak like that.

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jacques_chester
Quite noticeable in politics. The mannerisms and speaking style of political
leaders are quickly picked up by their followers.

When Kevin Rudd was the Australian Prime Minister, every Labor MP sprinkled
their conversations with "can I just say" and asked themselves questions.

Now it's Julia Gillard and we're being treated to being spoken to like a class
of special-needs 5 year olds.

------
wiradikusuma
Quick question: does anyone know whether it's only true for English?

------
karolisd
Can someone please explain the chart?

~~~
kevinalexbrown
Go read the original paper. The link is at the bottom, and it's a preprint on
the Arxiv so it's not behind a paywall.

