Preview
  • The Secret Life of Pronouns

  • What Our Words Say About Us
  • By: James W. Pennebaker
  • Narrated by: Robert Fass
  • Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (209 ratings)

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The Secret Life of Pronouns

By: James W. Pennebaker
Narrated by: Robert Fass
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Publisher's summary

We spend our lives communicating. In the last 50 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 will lead 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.

©2011 James W. Pennebaker (P)2012 Tantor
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Critic reviews

"A comprehensive investigation of how our words... reveal important insights about our behavior, emotions and personalities." ( Kirkus)
"Penetrating … lively and accessible … Paying closer attention to function words [Pennebaker] advises, can help us understand the social relations that those words reflect. Unfortunately, we might not be able to pay proper attention until we’re all equipped with automatic word counters. Until that day, we have Pennebaker as an indefatigable guide to the little words that he boldly calls 'keys to the soul.'" ( The New York Times Book Review)