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A Handy Guide for Spotting and Interpreting Function Words in the Wild
DIFFERENT FUNCTION WORDS can signal different psychological states. Pronouns, articles, prepositions, verbs, and emotion words provide different information about how people are thinking, feeling, and connecting with others. Feel free to tear out this Word Guide for use in all future settings where people are using language.
ATTENTIONAL FOCUS: PRONOUNS, VERB TENSE
Language tracks our focus of attention. We talk and write about objects, events, and people that are on our minds. A good rule of thumb is that people who pay a great deal of attention to other people tend to use personal pronouns at high rates. People who obsess about the past use past-tense verbs. Turning this observation upside down, by counting instances of pronoun and verb tense use, we can guess what naturally grabs people’s attention.
PERSONAL PRONOUNS
We probably spend more time thinking and talking about other people than anything else. If another person makes us exuberantly happy, furiously angry, or deeply sad, we often can’t stop thinking about him or her. We will often drop his or her name in our conversations with others, tossing in numerous pronouns as we refer to the person. Consequently, if the speaker is thinking and talking about a friend, expect high rates of third-person singular pronouns. If worried about communists, right-wing radio hosts, or bureaucrats, words such as they and them will be more frequent than average.
The word I is no different. If people are self-conscious, their attention flips to themselves briefly but at higher rates than people who are not self-conscious. For example, people use the word I more when completing a questionnaire in front of a mirror than if no mirror is present. If their attention is drawn to themselves because they are sick, feeling pain, or deeply depressed, they also use I more. In contrast, people who are immersed in a task tend to use I-words at very low levels.
VERB TENSE
; Whereas personal pronouns provide information about the subject of attention, verb tense can tell us how people are thinking about time. Not surprisingly, when people think about the past, they use the past tense; when thinking about the future, they tend to use the future tense. More interesting is when people flip between tenses. For example, people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (or PTSD) often have flashbacks of horrific events that they may have experienced months or years in the past. Here, a Vietnam veteran describes a terrifying night that occurred decades earlier:
We had used bulldozers to build … bunkers … to protect us from sporadic shelling. I could not sleep in the bunker (it was like a crypt). This night … we were getting incoming [mortar fire and] our platoon sergeant cracked, rolled himself up in the corner of the bunker and hysterically cried. I went outside to the top of the berm after the shelling stopped and waited. Shit. It was dark again. As we all sat there, sporadic ground fire would open up from time to time, and we would all send some rounds down … Maybe an hour later, I’m on top of the berm, looking out, and I feel his presence again. I keep staring, trying to see movement, but it’s too dark. I get up, run over to … ask for flares. I go back up top, staring, waiting for the illumination, none comes. I know he’s out there again and not alone … Obviously, I made it okay. I just can’t remember what happened next.
The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us Page 34