The Secret Life of Pronouns What Our Words Say About Us

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To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of?¹ — Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare.

¹ Pronouns oft fall prey to the stop word filter, yet they hold the keys to unlocking the depth of intimate meaning

TL;DR – ML, NLP and the secret life of pronouns

Pronouns in a nutshell

• When I got started with NLP I was coding search engines and conventional wisdom was pronouns don’t pass the stop word filter
• One of the gems I learned on that job was that everything in the corpus can be provide invaluable information if we only know how to index it.
• After reading this book and I started to unlocked the power of the pronouns.
• At Hungarian School I discovered how pronouns combine with case ending to create a vast vistas of untapped NLP resource.
• Cognitive AI I noted that pronouns and particles are key in extending the primitive verb system via thematic roles to get a very rich semantic systems in the lexicon with little costs in learning.

Podcast

The secret life of pronouns in context

I got interested in this book when I was deep into wikipedia research. I was in a place where I wanted to be able to attribute content to the authors. I had read some disturbing articles with prior work on the topic by some researchers from my Alma Mater. However, I eventually came across this book and it seemed to put the ideas in a better form. Less about ML and more about the type of writers and their personalities.

In (Pennebaker 2013) “The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us,” the author explores how the seemingly innocuous function words we use—pronouns, articles, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs—can reveal a great deal about our personalities, emotions, social connections, and psychological states. James W. Pennebaker, the author and a social psychologist, uses computer-based text analysis methods to uncover these hidden patterns.

Outline

• Key Questions and Themes:

  • Can language reveal psychological states? The author is primarily interested in what people’s words say about their psychological states. The book investigates whether language features can reveal how people are thinking and whether this information can be used to change their thinking.
  • How do function words differ from content words? The book distinguishes between content and style of speech, arguing that function words, which reflect language style, reveal more about a person than content words. Function words are tied to the relationship between speaker and listener.
  • Do men and women use words differently? The book explores gender differences in language use, noting that women are typically more attentive to the thoughts and feelings of others, while men are less so. It also investigates whether different writing styles reflect different personalities.
  • Can language predict behavior? The book examines whether language use can predict behaviors such as success in college, risk of suicide, leadership styles, and likelihood of declaring war.
  • How can language be used as a tool for change? The author examines whether analyzing words can lead to improvements in relationships, teaching, and leadership. Additionally, the book looks at how writing about emotional upheavals can improve mental and physical health, and whether using certain types of words can influence the effectiveness of that writing.
  • Can language reveal deception? The book explores linguistic markers of deception, such as the use of first-person singular pronouns and the mention of other individuals.
  • Can language analysis help identify authors? The book presents methods for identifying authors using function words, punctuation, and obscure words.

• Main Examples and Studies:

  • Expressive Writing: Early research focused on the benefits of writing about traumatic experiences, leading to the development of the LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) program. This program helps analyze word categories associated with healthy writing such as positive emotion words, cognitive words, and the ability to construct a story.
  • The Bottle and the Two People Pictures: Participants described pictures, and their descriptions were analyzed for function word use and content. For example, people who focused on shadows in the bottle picture tended to be more creative. The second picture revealed common themes such as social connections, clothing, and accessories.
  • Thinking Styles: The book describes how people’s function words can be statistically grouped into categories reflecting thinking styles, such as formal, analytic, and narrative. These thinking styles can predict how people relate to others and organize their worlds.
  • 9/11 Blog Analysis: The language used in blog posts was analyzed before and after the 9/11 attacks. Researchers noted an increase in negative emotion words, a decrease in positive emotion words, and a temporary increase in cognitive words.
  • College Admissions Essays: The study examined whether the writing style in college admissions essays could predict college grades.
  • The Federalist Papers: The book discusses the use of function words to determine the authorship of the anonymous Federalist Papers.
  • Language Style Matching (LSM): LSM is a technique to determine how similarly two people use function words. It is used in studies of couples, speed dating, and even the writings of historical figures to analyze the relationship between the authors.
  • Obama’s Pronoun Use: The book analyzes Barack Obama’s use of first-person singular pronouns. His relatively low use of I-words is interpreted as a sign of self-confidence.

• Additional Insights:

  • Stealth Words: The book emphasizes the importance of function words, often called “stealth words,” which are often overlooked.
  • The Role of Computers: Computer technology has revolutionized the study of language, allowing researchers to analyze large datasets and uncover hidden patterns that would be impossible to see with manual analysis.
  • Language as a Tool: Language can be used not only as a window into the inner workings of people, but also as a tool for guiding thinking and promoting change.
  • Interdisciplinary Approach: The author’s work draws on multiple disciplines including psychology, linguistics, computer science, history, and political science.

References

Pennebaker, J. W. 2013. The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say about Us. Bloomsbury USA. https://books.google.co.il/books?id=p9KmCAAAQBAJ.