The Secret Life of Pronouns (34 page)

The second substantial drop in I-word usage occurred in mid-September 2002. According to White House scholars, the Bush administration had long been troubled by Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein. In addition, some within the White House felt that Hussein was behind the September 11 attacks and/or was intent on building a nuclear arsenal. In June 2002, some in the Bush administration began to suggest a new approach to foreign policy. Part of the Bush Doctrine, as some referred to it, was that the United States was justified in preemptively attacking a country with hostile intent.

George W. Bush’s use of I-words across 360 press meetings during the first term of his presidency (based on percentage of total words). The vertical lines represent the following: 9/11 = September 11 attacks; Decision = probable final decision to go to war in Iraq (October 2002); War = invasion of Iraq (March 2003); Reelection = November 2004.

Through the summer of 2002, secret plans were drawn up about a possible invasion. In late September, the Bush administration asked Congress for authority to go to war with Iraq. This was couched as a bargaining tool and would only be done as a last resort if Iraq failed to allow inspectors full access to the country to ferret out weapons of mass destruction. Congress voted in support of the request on October 16. In a nationally televised speech that night, Bush made it clear that he hoped that war would be avoided. In an article by
New Yorker
writer and Berkeley journalism professor Mark Danner, British documents eventually surfaced proving that, with the final blessing of the U.S. Congress, war was a virtual certainty.

Imagine you are a leader and you know you are going to attack another country. To be effective, you have to keep your plans completely secret. You can’t let anything slip about troop movements, rescaling vast parts of the country’s economy, or letting your enemies know what your plans might be. You must be wary about what you say. Not only must you be deceptive, you have to pay attention to every facet of government to coordinate the clandestine war effort. To accomplish all of this, an effective leader must act—and not sit around contemplating his or her feelings.

Drops in I-words are a powerful tell among people who are about to carry out a threat. We have found similar patterns in Truman’s language prior to dropping the atomic bombs on Japan in World War II and in Hitler’s speeches prior to his invasion of Poland in 1939.

The idea that the language of leaders can predict the outbreak of wars has been suggested by others as well. The Belgian psychologist Robert Hogenraad has studied how leaders mention themes of power and affiliation in their speeches. When references to affiliation and friendship are commonplace and comments about power, aggression, and mastery are low, the outlook for the country is usually good. However, if themes of power and aggression start to rise with a corresponding drop in words associated with nurturance and relationships, watch out. High power/low affiliation themes among leaders is a reliable predictor of wars. Conflicts in Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Georgia and Russia, and various hotspots in the Middle East all were presaged by language shifts by the countries’ leaders.

One final observation. It’s interesting that Bush’s I-words never changed substantially once the war started. They temporarily went up a bit coinciding with his “Mission Accomplished” speech in May 2003, when he felt that the war was over. Subsequent drops in I-word use in the summers of 2003 and 2004 reflect his increasing focus on the war and, in 2004, his defensiveness with the press for its questioning his decisions about it.

THE POWER OF WORDS TO RETHINK HISTORY

I’ve tried to give a taste of the exciting possibilities that word analysis can bring to the study of politics and history. Wherever there is a word trail—no matter what language—computer text analysis methods can help interpret the psychology of the authors. Some of the studies in this area have practical applications. Other work is simply fun to do.

For example, my students, colleagues, and I have worked with several federal agencies to better understand the psychology of leaders of groups such as al-Qaeda to try to understand the relationships between their public messages and their sometimes-brutal actions. Can we understand their appeal by studying their language or the language of their followers? We have used these same methods to better understand extremist groups in the United States, ranging from far-right-wing neo-Nazis to far-left-wing Weathermen. In general, we are finding the violent groups have a very different linguistic fingerprint than nonviolent ones. Further, as they evolve from being nonviolent to increasingly violent, their language shifts accordingly.

We have also turned our language tools to the study of powerful, often despotic leaders of the past and present. For example, how have leaders such as Mao, Hitler, Castro, and others changed in their language use as they themselves changed from revolutionaries, to dictators, to sometimes-respected leaders in their countries? How has their language predicted changes in their countries and how have events changed their language?

Most important, language analyses can shed light on historical events in new ways. We’ve seen some possibilities with the Federalist Papers, relationships among poets and scholars, and even the Beatles. The historical questions that can be answered are limited only by the availability of language samples and the researchers’ imaginations. For example, did the Australian explorer Henry Hellyer really commit suicide or might he have been murdered? (Probably suicide based on his language in his diaries.) Did St. Paul really write all the letters attributed to him in the Bible? (Nope—not a chance.) Has Lady Gaga had an affair with Tom Cruise? (No idea. Hope not.)

Now it’s your turn.

USING PEOPLE’S WORDS TO PREDICT THEIR BEHAVIORS IN THE FUTURE

Can word analyses tell us if someone will eventually be a good president, a good spouse, a good employee or student? In fact, we do these calculations in our heads all the time. If a student writes to me and wants to work in my lab, I read her e-mail, her résumé, and her plans. Her words—which reflect her accomplishments, hopes for the future, and personality—will be the basis of my decision. People who rely on online dating sites may ultimately decide who their spouse will be based on his or her word use. And yes, we weigh political candidates’ faces and body language, but we also evaluate their platforms and plans, which are expressed in language.

Although we listen to and think about people’s words before voting for, hiring, or marrying them, it is impressive how frequently we err in our judgments. Would a language analysis program do a better job? Or would it help us in making better decisions? The jury is still out, but some interesting examples can be found among students planning to go to college and prisoners planning to find a normal life.

USING WORDS IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS ESSAYS TO PREDICT COLLEGE GRADES

My linguist friend David Beaver and I were sitting in a bar talking about pronouns. (How many bar stories have you heard start off that way?) Wouldn’t it be great if there was some simple relationship between word use and how people later behave in life? We started to challenge each other about possible language samples we could get that could be linked to important real-world behaviors. And then I remembered Gary Lavergne.

Several years earlier, I had met Gary, the chief researcher in the University of Texas at Austin’s admissions office. Gary was not your usual statistician. He has published a series of nonfiction thrillers on mass murderers and, most recently, a book on the history of school desegregation in Texas. He was also interested in what factors predicted who would succeed in college. The University of Texas always has one of the largest student bodies of any campus in the United States. Although the school enrolls over seven thousand new first-year college students each year, the admission standards are surprisingly competitive. Part of the application process involves students writing two general essays.

Could the function words students use in their admissions essays predict their college grades? This was an appealing question for both David and me and, as it turned out, for Gary as well. To be clear, this was not a strategy to invent a new way to evaluate college essays to determine who should be admitted. Rather, we first wanted to learn if word use was related to academic performance and, if it was, whether we could influence the students to become better writers and thinkers in college.

We eventually analyzed over fifty thousand essays from twenty-five thousand students who had enrolled over a four-year period. The results were straightforward. Word use was indeed related to students’ grades over all four years of college. The word categories most strongly related to making good grades were:

•  High rates of articles and concrete nouns

•  High rates of big words

•  Low rates of auxiliary and other verbs (especially present tense)

•  Low rates of personal and impersonal pronouns

This constellation of words should look familiar to you. You might recall from earlier chapters that people differ in the degree to which they are categorical versus dynamic thinkers. A categorical thinker is someone who tends to focus on objects, things, and categories. The opposite end of this dimension are people who are more dynamic in their thinking. When thinking dynamically, people are describing action and changes. Often, dynamic thinkers devote much of their thinking to other people (which explains their high use of pronouns).

Does this mean that categorical thinkers are simply smarter than dynamic thinkers? Not at all. However, the American educational system is designed to test people concerning the ways they categorize objects and events.

Look at these two examples of college admissions essays that display categorical versus dynamic thinking. (The actual content of these essays has been changed considerably while keeping the rate of articles, nouns, large words, verbs, and pronouns intact.)

The categorical thinker

The concept of choice has played a prominent role in Western philosophy. One’s personality is polished to a more defined state by both conscious and unconscious considerations. The ultimate aim of liberty cannot be reached without a thorough control over the choices one makes. The divorce of my parents made me lead a double life. My partial withdrawal from reality had severe negative effects, including the inability to understand other viewpoints …

Notice how the writer’s sentences methodically define and categorize thoughts and experiences. The writing is structured and largely impersonal but, at the same time, ponderous. Compare the categorical thinker with a more dynamic one.

The dynamic thinker

I looked over at my brother, who was much older and wiser, only to see him crying. Before I knew it, I was crying too. I didn’t really know why, but if my brother thought it was bad, it was bad. Everyone moves, but it was the magnitude of my journey, a seven-hundred-mile trip from a small farming village to one of the biggest cities in America. It was going to be challenging but also an opportunity to grow. It involved giving up everything that is important to young children; family, friends, school.

The dynamic writer is far more personal and works to tell a story. The language is more informal and simple, using shorter words. Every sentence has multiple verbs, which has the effect of making the story more alive.

Although both of these students came to college with virtually identical high school records and received liberal arts degrees, the categorical thinker had a much higher grade-point average every year in college. It wasn’t because the categorical thinker was a better writer. Rather, a categorical thinking style is more congruent with what we reward in college. Most exams, for example, ask students to break down complex problems into their component parts. At the same time, very few courses ask students to discuss ongoing events or to tell their own stories.

Most universities will never use word counting programs to decide who to admit to college. Once students discovered such a system was operative, their admissions essays would be a jumble of big words and articles, and practically verb-free. Instead, findings such as these point to ways we might think about training our students in high school and earlier. To the degree that categorical thinking is encouraged and rewarded in our educational systems, students should be explicitly trained in doing it.

Another argument is that we should explore whether dynamic thinking should be encouraged at the college level. Telling stories and tracking changes in people’s lives are skills that can serve people well. It also raises the question about how successful people are in the years after college. Is it possible that dynamic thinkers are better adjusted or happier? And finally, how flexible is thinking style? It is entirely possible that all of us occasionally need to think categorically and, at other times, dynamically.

USING WORDS TO PREDICT A BETTER LIFE AFTER PRISON