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Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#11

Post by 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

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#12

Post by cturner »

mahmud wrote: post #7
lawlit wrote: post #3

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

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

Until I'd read that I'd not realised what a powerful play the royal we is. It's an attempt to craft the identity of the listener into the project of the speaker. In its own way a hack - it makes for our reasoning via our language processing.

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#13

Post by TeMPOraL »

dill_day wrote: post #8
hugh3 wrote: post #2

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…

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…

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.

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#15

Post by 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.

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#16

Post by wisty »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #13
dill_day wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 thei…

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.

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#17

Post by 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

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#18

Post by adamzochowski »

ajuc wrote: post #15

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 su…

Minor nitpick (correct me please).

'szła' is closer to "she was going"

'poszła' is closer to "she went"

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#19

Post by pavel_lishin »

ajuc wrote: post #15

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 su…

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.)

Re: Psychologist James Pennebaker reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

#20

Post by zemanel »

zemanel wrote: post #14

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

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 ..."

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