Saturday, August 20, 2011

I Said, and We Heard

What do your emails reveal about your relationships with those around you? More that just the details of the subject, apparently. Psychologist James Pennebaker has been studying the use of pronouns in written language, and he has uncovered a startlingly robust correlation: in correspondence between people of unequal rank, the lower ranked person will use more “I,” “me,” and “my” pronouns, and the higher ranked person will use more “we,” “us,” and “our” pronouns. This gives a whole new spin to the “royal we.”

Read more here: The Secret Language Code via Scientificamerican.com

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