THE SECRET LIFE OF PRONOUNS:

WHAT OUR WORDS SAY ABOUT US

BY JAMES W. PENNEBAKER

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Figure 2.1

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Figure 2.2

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Figure 2.3

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Figure 3.1

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Figure 3.2

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Figure 3.3

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Figure 4.1

Figure 4.2

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Figure 4.3

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 Figure 5.1

Note: The Shakespeare analyses are of the first and last speeches by King Lear; the Giuliani data are
based on press conferences during the first four years of Giuliani’s administration and during the two
months immediately following his announcement of his prostate cancer. Numbers are percentage
of total words within speeches (for Lear) and within press conferences (for Giuliani).

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 Figure 5.2

Note: Graphs reflect percentage of I-words (top) and we-words (bottom) within daily blog
entries of 1,084 bloggers in the two months surrounding September 11, 2001.

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 Figure 5.3

Note: Lines reflect the use of positive and negative emotion word usage of 1,084 bloggers.
Baseline is the average of two months of blog posts prior to September 11. Data points
through September 25 are by day, and thereafter by week through November 6.

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 Figure 6.1

Note that words with bars on the left side of the table are reliably associated with deception. The
farther to the left, the less trustworthy. Those on the right side are markers of honesty. Those words
with bars close to the center line are not reliably associated with either truth or deception.

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Figure 7.1

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 Figure 8.1

How to Measure Language Style Matching

(Recall that the vertical line, |, refers to absolute value.)

Figure 8.2

Language style matching (LSM) scores between the works of Elizabeth Barrett and
Robert Browning and of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The higher the LSM score,
the more similarly the two poets used function words.

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 Figure 8.3

Language style matching scores in the correspondence between Sigmund Freud

and Carl Jung. The higher the number, the more closely the two men matched in
their use of function words in their letters to each other.

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Figure 9.1

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 Figure 9.2

Relative use of words within an immediacy cluster (I-words, short words, present-tense verbs,
nonuse of articles) and making-distinction cluster (exclusive words, negations, causal words,
nonuse of inclusive words). Darker regions reflect higher usage.
Language samples are based on about 37,500 U.S. This I Believe essays.

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 Figure 10.1

Rate of social-emotional language by U.S. presidents in their annual State of the Union
messages delivered to Congress. The numbers have been adjusted to control
for written versus spoken presentations.

Figure 10.2

Use of first-person singular pronouns in press conferences as a function of total words.

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 Figure 10.3

George W. Bush’s use of I-words across 360 press meetings during the first term of his
presidency (based on percentage of total words). The vertical lines represent the following:
9/11 = September 11 attacks; Decision = probable final decision to go to war in Iraq
(October 2002); War = invasion of Iraq (March 2003); Reelection = November 2004.

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