The Secret Life of Pronouns (7 page)

FABIAN: A pot belly. Pot bellies are sexy.

BUTCH: Well you should be happy, ’cause you do.

FABIAN: Shut up, Fatso! I don’t have a pot! I have a bit of a tummy, like Madonna when she did “Lucky Star,” it’s not the same thing.

BUTCH: I didn’t realize there was a difference between a tummy and a pot belly.

FABIAN: The difference is huge.

BUTCH: You want me to have a pot?

FABIAN: No. Pot bellies make a man look either oafish, or like a gorilla. But on a woman, a pot belly is very sexy. The rest of you is normal. Normal face, normal legs, normal hips, normal ass, but with a big, perfectly round pot belly. If I had one, I’d wear a tee-shirt two sizes too small to accentuate it.

BUTCH: You think guys would find that attractive?

FABIAN: I don’t give a damn what men find attractive. It’s unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same.

That Quentin Tarantino’s characters use the language of males might not be too shocking for serious moviegoers. But what about the Bard himself, William Shakespeare? In perhaps the most famous scene of
Romeo and Juliet
, the young lovers proclaim:

ROMEO: What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief That thou her maid are far more fair than she. Be not her maid, since she is envious. Her vestal livery is but sick and green, And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off. It is my lady; O, it is my love! O that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses; I will answer it. I am too bold; ’tis not to me she speaks. Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars As daylight does a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek!…

JULIET: O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.… ’Tis but your name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face. O, be some other name Belonging to a man. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name; And for thy name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself.

We can feel the yearning and innocence of Romeo and Juliet, the lightness and openness. A cursory reading would never reveal that both—especially Juliet—are expressing themselves the ways that males tend to do. Both use I-words at low levels, use a below-average number of personal pronouns in general, and have above-average article usage, especially for such a personal and intimate setting.

Shakespeare and Tarantino are males and write like males. Their male and female characters use function words the ways males do. The two writers may share the same stealth word usage, but they clearly differ in the content and breadth of what they write. Shakespeare is of interest because he brilliantly conveys real-life themes and concerns women have. But his use of function words, much like Tarantino’s, suggests that he fails at getting inside the minds of women.

Do these things matter from the audience’s perspective? Yes, but in a subtle way. Recall Deborah Tannen’s analogy of sex differences being akin to cultural differences. Most of us can read, say, Dostoyevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
and come away with an appreciation of Raskolnikov’s tortured thoughts of murdering the pawnbroker. We can do this even without speaking Russian or knowing nineteenth-century St. Petersburg culture. Of course, the St. Petersburg native reading Dostoyevsky’s work in 1866 would undoubtedly possess a more intimate understanding of the book than would twenty-first-century native English speakers. By the same token, a woman scriptwriter’s depiction of a man’s way of speaking may mischaracterize the ways males actually speak, but if the content is compelling, we will probably not notice it.

SEX DIFFERENCES IN LANGUAGE: THE POSSIBLE ROLE OF TESTOSTERONE

Women and men use language differently, tend to talk about different topics, and ultimately may represent two subcultures of humans. Clearly, girls and boys are socialized differently, which may account for many of the language differences. Is it also possible that our interests may be influenced by our hormones? And if our interests are hormone related, perhaps our hormones may guide our everyday language use.

Beyond the anatomical differences of women and men, the two sexes have strikingly different hormonal profiles. Compared to men, women have very high levels of estrogen—a family of hormones that regulate the menstrual cycle, the development of female sex organs, breasts, and pubic hair, as well as aid in the ability to become pregnant. For men, the hormone testosterone is associated with the development of male sex organs and secondary sex characteristics such as facial hair. Women also secrete testosterone but at much lower levels than men, just as men have low levels of estrogen.

For a variety of reasons, both men and women occasionally undergo testosterone therapy, whereby they are given periodic injections of the hormone. What would happen to their language during times when their testosterone levels were high versus when they were low? Through an odd series of events, I was able to answer the question.

Around the year 2000, I was contacted by Professor James Dabbs, a world-renowned expert on the psychological correlates of testosterone. A tall, distinguished southerner with a polite, regal bearing, Jim had measured testosterone levels of murderers, lawyers, actors, priests, academics, and others—always with a twinkle in his eye. Much of his work examined the links between aggressive behaviors and testosterone levels. (During one serious conference on hormones and behavior, Jim started his talk by looking around the packed lecture hall and snorting, “There’s not enough testosterone in this entire room to rob a single liquor store.”)

Jim had received a letter from a biological female who was undergoing therapy to become male, a female-to-male (FTM) sex change, or, more accurately, gender reassignment. The person, GH, was twenty-eight years old and had been involved in gender reassignment for three years. In addition to a double mastectomy, GH received injections of testosterone every two to four weeks. GH had read about Jim’s research and wanted to know if he would like to study GH’s diaries, which he (GH) had been keeping for several years. Knowing that I studied language, Jim felt I could examine the effects of testosterone on function words.

GH was articulate and a prolific writer. He provided my research team with two years of his diaries along with a detailed record of his testosterone injections. While we were transcribing GH’s diaries, I was invited to give a series of talks in Boston. One night, I found myself in a bar talking to a gentleman who happened to be an anthropologist. In the midst of our conversation, I mentioned the GH project. My new anthropologist friend was silent for a minute and finally said that he, too, was taking testosterone injections on the advice of his physician. He was sixty years old and had been taking testosterone for four years in an attempt to restore his upper-body strength. “Really?” I asked innocently. “Do you have a record of your injections?” Yes. “By any chance do you keep a diary?” No, but he was willing to let me analyze all of his outgoing e-mails for the previous year.

The analyses were straightforward. For both GH and the anthropologist, the words that they wrote each day were analyzed using the LIWC computer program. The word categories were then compared against the number of days since each person’s last testosterone injection. The idea was that as time passed since the last injection, each person’s testosterone levels would drop.

The similarity of effects for the two people was striking and the overall results promising. Whether their testosterone went up or down, no predictable changes were seen in their use of articles, prepositions, nouns, verbs, and negative emotion words. However, there was one fascinating and reliable difference—in social pronouns (including words like
we
,
us
,
he
,
she
,
they
, and
them
). As testosterone levels dropped, they used more social pronouns. Think what this means: Both GH and the anthropologist inject themselves with testosterone and they now focus on tasks, goals, events, and the occasional object—but not people. And then, as the days wear on, they awake each morning and notice that there are other human beings around. And these human beings are interesting and worth talking about and talking to. And then, a few weeks later and another injection, and voilà! They’re cured. No more worrying about others.

This study gives us a glimpse of how testosterone may psychologically affect people. Prior to receiving their results, I asked both participants how they felt that testosterone affected their language. GH was certain that the injections gave him more energy, made his mood more positive, and stimulated more thoughts of sex, aggression, sports, and traditional masculine things. The anthropologist, on the other hand, was adamant that testosterone had absolutely no psychological effect on him whatsoever. Both were wrong.

What does a study like this tell us about sex differences and the biology of function words? Only a little, I’m afraid. Injections of testosterone did not change GH’s sex or the anthropologist’s masculinity. There is no evidence that this hormonal assault had any effects on the ways either person understood, thought about, or categorized their world. It is significant, for example, that not a hint of changes in articles, nouns, verbs, cognitive words, or prepositions occurred. Finally, this was a study on only two people in unusual circumstances, meaning we should be cautious in generalizing the findings.

On a broader level, however, the testosterone study, along with the various gender-language projects, tells us a little about the ways men and women see and understand their worlds. Men are less interested in thinking and talking about other people than are women. The effects may be influenced by testosterone, but quite frankly, the testosterone findings are too preliminary to make grand pronouncements just yet.

That there are differences in social interests between women and men isn’t exactly news. However, the fact that men consistently use more articles, nouns, and prepositions
is
news. OK, maybe it’s not going to be on CNN’s
Headline News
. But it is news because these language differences signal that men tend to talk and think about concrete objects and things in highly specific ways. They are naturally categorizing things. Further, the use of prepositions signals that the categorization process is being done in hierarchical and spatial ways. Think about when we use prepositions:

The keys to the trunk of the car from Maria are next to the lamp under the picture of the boat painted by your mother.

The words
to
,
of
,
from
,
next to
,
under
,
of
, and
by
specify which and whose keys and exactly where they are in space. There is a hierarchical structure in the sense that these are not just any keys. Rather, they are part of the category of trunks, which are part of the category of cars from Maria. Similarly, the location of the keys is specified in both horizontal (next to) and vertical (under) planes. Statistically, it is much more likely that a sentence such as this would be uttered by a man than a woman. It’s not that the man has a penchant for prepositions and nouns—rather a man naturally categorizes and assigns objects to spatial locations at rates higher than women.

WORDS OF WISDOM: LANGUAGE USE OVER THE LIFE SPAN

In most large surveys, researchers ask three questions: sex, age, and social class. Social class, which we will discuss soon, is usually asked indirectly with questions linked to race, education, or income. Why do survey makers want to know your sex, age, and social class if studying your political attitudes or buying behaviors? Because these three variables predict a stunning amount about people. If I know your sex, age, and social class, I can make surprisingly accurate guesses about your movie and music preferences, your religious and political views, your physical and mental health, and even your life expectancy.

These three demographic factors are also linked to language use. In many ways, the connections between language and age are more interesting than the connections to gender. If you are born a woman, the odds are very, very high that you will remain a woman your entire life. However, if you are born a baby, the odds are astronomically high that you won’t remain one very long.

That our language—more specifically our use of function words—changes over the life span is, in some ways, surprising. But less so if you consider how our goals and life situations evolve, as do our bodies. As we get older, we change in the ways we orient to our friends and family, sex, money, health, death, and dozens of other life concerns.

Our personalities shift as well. Studies with thousands of people indicate that how we feel about ourselves is generally quite positive up until about age twelve. From about thirteen to twenty, our self-esteem levels drop to some of the lowest levels in our lives. Thereafter, to around the age of seventy, most people’s self-esteem gradually increases. In fact, by around the age of sixty-five, many of us feel as good about ourselves as when we were nine years old—which is as good as it ever gets. And then, self-esteem tends to drop during the last few years of life. Other studies, based on 5,400 pairs of twins, find that as people get older, they become less outgoing, more emotionally stable, and a bit more impulsive.