James Pennebaker

The Secret Life of Pronouns

Notify me when the book’s added
To read this book, upload an EPUB or FB2 file to Bookmate. How do I upload a book?
We spend our lives communicating. In the last fifty years, we've zoomed through radically different forms of communication, from typewriters to tablet computers, text messages to tweets. We generate more and more words with each passing day. Hiding in that deluge of language are amazing insights into who we are, how we think, and what we feel.In The Secret Life of Pronouns, social psychologist and language expert James W. Pennebaker uses his groundbreaking research in computational linguistics-in essence, counting the frequency of words we use-to show that our language carries secrets about our feelings, our self-concept, and our social intelligence. Our most forgettable words, such as pronouns and prepositions, can be the most revealing: their patterns are as distinctive as fingerprints. Using innovative analytic techniques, Pennebaker X-rays everything from Craigslist advertisements to the Federalist Papers-or your own writing, in quizzes you can take yourself-to yield unexpected insights. Who would have predicted that the high school student who uses too many verbs in her college admissions essay is likely to make lower grades in college? Or that a world leader's use of pronouns could reliably presage whether he led his country into war? You'll learn why it's bad when politicians use "we" instead of "I," what Lady Gaga and William Butler Yeats have in common, and how Ebenezer Scrooge's syntax hints at his self-deception and repressed emotion. Barack Obama, Sylvia Plath, and King Lear are among the figures who make cameo appearances in this sprightly, surprising tour of what our words are saying-whether we mean them to or not.
This book is currently unavailable
437 printed pages
Publication year
2011
Have you already read it? How did you like it?
👍👎

Quotes

  • Menna Abu Zahrahas quoted2 years ago
    The stories people wrote were powerful and oftentimes haunting.
  • Menna Abu Zahrahas quoted2 years ago
    Perhaps the key to expressive writing was buried in what people actually say in their essays.
  • Menna Abu Zahrahas quoted2 years ago
    Another group points to the unhealthy effects of rumination and unfinished business.

On the bookshelves

fb2epub
Drag & drop your files (not more than 5 at once)