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Thread: Secret Life of Pronouns

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    Default Secret Life of Pronouns

    http://secretlifeofpronouns.com/

    This got a plug on No Agenda, with a talk about how politicians use performatives to mask their lies.

    I want to say, right now... and I want to make it very clear... that starting with performatives and segueing into a lie is surprisingly easy.

    I'll see if there's a PDF somewhere around and report back


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    I had come across this a couple of years ago, thought it interesting, but was unwilling to buy the book.
    Your post sent me on a search. I didn't find a pdf, but here is a scribd online version: http://www.scribd.com/doc/95295452/T...s-W-Pennebaker
    The author also has some youtube videos, a ted talk, and on his site, even some exercises to try out. http://www.secretlifeofpronouns.com/exercises.php

    Thank you for the reminder and the inspiration to look it up again.

    ------
    Edited to add: for fun, i took his lifestyle test and got 4 (low)in each category of Suburbanite, Cultured, Slacker, and Preppie.
     

    Dimension 1: Suburbanite

    People high on the suburbanite dimension tend to live a more conventional lifestyle. Their home is their castle. They like to cook, do yardwork, and keep things clean and organized. Suburbanites like their cars, SUVs, and pickups. Young suburbanites watch MTV and listen to the occasional heavy metal. Those who are a little older tend to watch ESPN and listen to country music. The suburbanites also are somewhat more family oriented, conservative, and healthy in their daily behaviors.

    Your score on the Suburbanite dimension (which ranges from 0 to 13) is: 4. By most estimates, you would be considered LOW on this dimension. You live an unconventional life that might be best suited for the middle of a big city or perhaps in the middle of a deserted prairie, on a mountaintop, or floating peacefully on your boat in the middle of the ocean.

    Dimension 2: Cultured

    People high on the cultured dimension tend to get involved with all parts of life in order to better themselves and those around them. They often go to museums, do volunteer work, organize study groups and do a lot of writing-- whether it's letters to friends, personal journals, or short stories. Although they love to read, most would not be considered shy. Their musical tastes can be quite broad -- ranging from jazz and classical to hiphop. People high in Culture also like time to themselves. They also have an unhealthy appreciation of Macintosh computers.

    Your score on the Cultured dimension (which ranges from 0 to 13) is: 4. All things considered, you are LOW on this dimension. Just a wild guess but this computer thinks you might be eating too much fast food and watching a bit too much TV.

    Dimension 3: Slacker

    People high on the slacker dimension tend to spend a lot of their time on their computer. They download music, chat, and play computer games at high rates. They like to play other games as well -- pool, poker, and occasional board games. Parts of their lifestyle are unhealthy -- lots of TV, fast food, smoking, drinking, and just staring into space. They also have a slight hostile streak -- with a higher than usual rate of arguments with friends.

    Your score on the Slacker dimension (which ranges from 0 to 13) is: 4. The Surgeon General would be proud of you because you are LOW on this dimension. You appear to relate to human beings more than to computers. You may even have a strong spiritual side to you. In your heart, you know that drinking or smoking to excess is a bad idea.

    Dimension 4: Preppie

    People high on the preppie dimension are concerned with how they are seen by others. It is important that they look good to others. They spendPreppies also seek structure in their lives. They make to-do lists, like their home and workspace clean and organized. They watch Oprah, Desperate Housewives, and reality dating shows on TV. Their music preferences are for pop and soundtracks. Women tend to score higher on this dimension than men. Not surprisingly, they rate themselves as agreeable, reliable workers, and not lazy.

    Your score on the Preppie dimension (which ranges from 0 to 12) is: 4. You are relatively LOW on this dimension. This often reflects the fact that you are relatively happy with your appearance and the ways others see you. You might have some tendencies to slob-like behavior. Hey, it never hurts to clean your room occasionally.
    Last edited by anndelise; 06-24-2013 at 05:29 PM.
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    You live an unconventional life that might be best suited for the middle of a big city or perhaps in the middle of a deserted prairie, on a mountaintop, or floating peacefully on your boat in the middle of the ocean.
    Best test in the Universe


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    I've thought a lot about this, like looking back I had a request from an Asian girl in college to tutor her in Physical Chemistry. Now that was actually a real subject, but it was highly suggestive of something else. Immediately you could take that leap of faith and say it was her taking the first steps to trying to spark some physical chemistry, but then again you also have to consider the prospect that maybe you are a chemistry major and need help to pass the class so you look for a tutor. You are a non-homosexual man and your tutor is a 500 lb trucker.... the least thing you would want is that 500 lb trucker to take the leap of faith and give you some "tutoring". Regardless maybe there is a hidden meaning, but if you don't make it explicit or a reality it stays that. It's like collapsing a wave function in quantum mechanics, until you observe it, it doesn't become a reality. Each moment a person is presented with a series of doors they can open, but once they open a door, there is no way for them to unopen it. This is the collapse of a wave function. It is a duality between fate and free will. Every moment we observe ourselves we decide who we are and thus that observation becomes us and our history. Every observation on the nature of reality becomes our reality, and every observation made of us becomes someone elses reality. Thus the quote "How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours". So something like receiving an invitation to tutor a student in physical chemistry is just what it is, that is their karma that allows them to arrive to me, how I respond to that is my karma. So in one sense the words a person uses does reveal things about them, but its not an absolute thing, depending on your own nature you will derive a different meaning from it than someone else may. Thus its we arrive at the obvious conclusion that communicating is more than just mechanical words but a connection of two people's minds and personalities. That's pretty much the take away imo, nothing mystical or "mind reading" about it. So, you can't read people's minds and your mind is safe from the prying world as well - but there is still always some real connection that binds others.

    Goodbye Glass Delusions
    Last edited by male; 06-25-2013 at 12:00 AM.

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    I'm reading this book at the moment and one interesting thing brought up was that use of pronouns can show what the hierarchy is like within a group, according to how many times a person uses "I", "we", or "our". It would be interesting to take posts from this forum to see whether there is a hierarchy here and some people are treated with more respect than others.
    Warm Regards,



    Clowns & Entropy

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    I got distracted after a couple of chapters in, but it's near the top of my reading list.

    I do think it would be interesting to see what people have written and how those writings might be analyzed using the book's info. I dunno how one would go about it, though. Maybe have a handful of analysts and a thread where people can submit links to a writing? Or maybe form a group for discussing some writings? The problem might be getting enough people to be the analysts so can catch each other's misses and mistakes, since we don't have the software program the author uses.

    Bah, ignore me, I'm not sure this post makes much sense.
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    Well, there are (were?) people on this forum who knew how to program, and it by and large the actual mechanics of the program is easy if we know what the words we're looking out for are. The beauty of the system, as the writer says, is that it's a pretty easy system to set up, you're just counting pronouns. Heck, if we can compile all the lists of the different words then I could make the program.

    I reckon analysing people's forum posts would be interesting. Maybe we'd only be able to use the longer posts for more obvious results. It's cool because the writer keeps coming back to the fact that: how we think affects how we express ourselves, and how we express ourselves affects the sentence structure, and how sentences are structured affects the frequency we use certain words, so if we can figure out patterns in the frequency, we can understand the underlying way the person must think. And socionics is all about the way we see the world and the way we interpret the world, so maybe pronoun-use can tell us more about socionics.
    Warm Regards,



    Clowns & Entropy

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    In the page source, a user's post content is wrapped in <blockquote> tags, which are placed after member.php/<#>-Name-of-User

    You could probably have a spider crawl the site for posts, and associate them with dates and users. I don't know how the googlebots get thread data, though, because I'm apparently being logged for trying to get pages from outside my browser


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    HEY EVERYONE Okay so like one year later or 14 months really I've now learnt computers hell good. I'd be keen to actually do this and I want someone to help me decide what words to look at. Especially good would be people who have read the book.

    I'm thinking about doing stuff like:
    Category Might imply... Examples
    Causal thinking Ti types? Because, hence, therefore, since; or cause, effect, reason, impel
    Categorical thinking Thinking types? the, an, a
    Gulenko's thinking Gulenko's thinking That if...then nonsense or whatever

    More ideas!?
    Warm Regards,



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    It could be good to test Gulenko's cognitive styles against the data of self-typing. For example if-then statements are a result of causal-determinism in Gulenkonics, not . Meanwhile identifying according to Reinin semantics would be quite difficult, I think... unfortunately the semantics study was marred by the topics being quite abstract and difficult to quantify.


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    I am a sucker for online tests! I did the bottle test on that site.

     

    Visual Dimension Your data The average response
    Words on the label: Verbal thinking 1.48 1.74
    Colors and text: Visual sensitivity 3.70 3.74
    Bottle contents: Functional thinking 7.41 1.67
    The bottle itself: Tactile sensitivity 5.93 2.91
    Light and shadow: Contextual thinking 3.26 0.79

    Generally, the more you write, the better. In this exercise, anything less than about 50 words is not too reliable.

    Look at the table and compare your numbers with others who have done this task. In all cases, the higher the number, the more you used words associated with that particular category. The actual numbers refer to the percentage of all the words you wrote that were captured within each dimension. Based on very little evidence, one could imagine that your description of the bottle might mean something about you. This analysis is based on virtually no knowledge of you or of bottles in general. Take what is said with a grain of salt.

    Words on the label: Verbal thinking. People who score high on this dimension tend to focus on the label and what the words actually say. They often report that the letters Oza and Ka referred to Ozarka and that "Thirst Quencher" could be seen on the blue background. Your score is about average. You probably mentioned a couple of the broad features of the words on the label but didn't dwell on them.

    Colors and text: Visual sensitivity. Some people are particularly sensitive to colors and styles associated with writing. People who score high on the visual sensitivity dimension tend to write about colors of the text as well as the backgrounds. Your score on this dimension is close to the average. You are drawn to colors and have a passing interest in layout and design.

    Bottle contents: Functional thinking. The purpose of a water bottle is to hold water. Duh. People who score high on this dimension focus on the bottle as a container of something. In other words, they are thinking about the function of the bottle. Your language use in describing the bottle suggests that you are someone who thinks about the functions of objects. When you looked at the picture, your eyes probably wandered to the contents of the bottle. Most people didn't do this. Perhaps you have deep philosophical thoughts. Perhaps you are an aspiring engineer. Perhaps you are thirsty.

    The bottle itself: Tactile sensitivity. Someone who is high in tactile sensitivity likes to touch things. They appreciate the surface, texture, and contours of objects and people. They have an appreciation of the dimensionality of objects. In describing the bottle, high scorers paid attention to the surface and contour of the bottle itself, perhaps thinking of it like a sculpture. Your writing suggests a true appreciation of form, depth, and touch. In looking at the bottle, you tend to see it as a living object. You can imagine it in your hand with an awareness of its surface and contour. You may be a sensual person who appreciates the complexity of objects and people. You may also have a fetish for bottles. <--

    Light and shadow: Contextual thinking. If you look closely at the picture of the bottle, you will see that the lighting casts a shadow on the table through the bottle. People who wrote about this tended to score highly on this dimension. As you can see in the table, your score indicates that you are significantly more appreciative of context than most people. You are able to sense the role of light, depth, and perspective in viewing the bottle. Your artistic sensibilities and broad perspective hints that you could become an artist, a diplomat, or one of those fake vegetarians who eat fish.

    ______

    I did it again to see if I could do better but lost some points in some areas and gained in others



    Visual Dimension Your data The average response
    Words on the label: Verbal thinking 1.90 1.74
    Colors and text: Visual sensitivity 5.71 3.74
    Bottle contents: Functional thinking 7.62 1.67
    The bottle itself: Tactile sensitivity 10.48 2.91
    Light and shadow: Contextual thinking 1.90 0.79
    Overall, you wrote 105 words in the 5 minutes.


    Generally, the more you write, the better. In this exercise, anything less than about 50 words is not too reliable.

    Look at the table and compare your numbers with others who have done this task. In all cases, the higher the number, the more you used words associated with that particular category. The actual numbers refer to the percentage of all the words you wrote that were captured within each dimension. Based on very little evidence, one could imagine that your description of the bottle might mean something about you. This analysis is based on virtually no knowledge of you or of bottles in general. Take what is said with a grain of salt.
    Words on the label: Verbal thinking. People who score high on this dimension tend to focus on the label and what the words actually say. They often report that the letters Oza and Ka referred to Ozarka and that "Thirst Quencher" could be seen on the blue background. Your score is about average. You probably mentioned a couple of the broad features of the words on the label but didn't dwell on them.
    Colors and text: Visual sensitivity. Some people are particularly sensitive to colors and styles associated with writing. People who score high on the visual sensitivity dimension tend to write about colors of the text as well as the backgrounds. Your score on this dimension is far above average. The colors and the words on the label clearly attracted your attention. You may be particularly attentive to styles in fashion, art, and design. You may also have an appreciation of graphic design.
    Bottle contents: Functional thinking. The purpose of a water bottle is to hold water. Duh. People who score high on this dimension focus on the bottle as a container of something. In other words, they are thinking about the function of the bottle. Your language use in describing the bottle suggests that you are someone who thinks about the functions of objects. When you looked at the picture, your eyes probably wandered to the contents of the bottle. Most people didn't do this. Perhaps you have deep philosophical thoughts. Perhaps you are an aspiring engineer. Perhaps you are thirsty.
    The bottle itself: Tactile sensitivity. Someone who is high in tactile sensitivity likes to touch things. They appreciate the surface, texture, and contours of objects and people. They have an appreciation of the dimensionality of objects. In describing the bottle, high scorers paid attention to the surface and contour of the bottle itself, perhaps thinking of it like a sculpture. Your writing suggests a true appreciation of form, depth, and touch. In looking at the bottle, you tend to see it as a living object. You can imagine it in your hand with an awareness of its surface and contour. You may be a sensual person who appreciates the complexity of objects and people. You may also have a fetish for bottles.
    Light and shadow: Contextual thinking. If you look closely at the picture of the bottle, you will see that the lighting casts a shadow on the table through the bottle. People who wrote about this tended to score highly on this dimension. As you can see in the table, your score indicates that you are significantly more appreciative of context than most people. You are able to sense the role of light, depth, and perspective in viewing the bottle. Your artistic sensibilities and broad perspective hints that you could become an artist, a diplomat, or one of those fake vegetarians who eat fish.
    Last edited by Aylen; 07-14-2014 at 02:28 AM.

    “My typology is . . . not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight. It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical.”​ —C.G. Jung
     
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    This thread title would be a great book title. Will reply with more substance after
    I have actually given this thread a look through.
    Everything interests me but nothing holds me.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Holon View Post
    It could be good to test Gulenko's cognitive styles against the data of self-typing. For example if-then statements are a result of causal-determinism in Gulenkonics, not . Meanwhile identifying according to Reinin semantics would be quite difficult, I think... unfortunately the semantics study was marred by the topics being quite abstract and difficult to quantify.
    I'm still trying to figure out how Gulenko's cognitive styles would work because Secret Life of Pronouns is (part) based off certain sentences require certain words when they're talking in a certain way. For example, if I'm explaining to someone how to do something I'll be more likely to use articles ("the", "a", and "an"). So if there are types which are more likely to be the ones to talk about objects, or explain things, etc., then we would see them use more of those articles. In the book he gives an example of Obama v McCain, where Obama gave a more inspirational speech while McCain gave a more logical speech. Hence McCain used more articles when he was speaking.

    Anyway, that's the logic. The point is that there's not a big difference between "if-then-else" and "if-then" thinking. They'd probably both say "if", "then", "implies", etc., just the former would probably have something like "on the other hand," "if this were true". So I'd need to make sure I'm looking for those kinds of expressions. And, sister, don't get me started on Synergetic. Like. What even. What words do you people say.
    Warm Regards,



    Clowns & Entropy

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    Thanks for this site. I've noticed this through intuition that people use words in particular ways that indirectly describe their relationship with the subject, and reveals what they may know (or not know) about it. I think there's a branch of psychology that has noticed this trend, as well, but I forget the specific field of study at the moment.

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    Okay the new plan is to eventually download all of the things ever said by anyone on this site and to see if there are any correlations between all (15) dichotomies and certain words. But I need a list of everyone's username and declared type. Is there a pretty good list somewhere?
    Warm Regards,



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    I found this spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...Xc&usp=sharing. Good work team.
    Warm Regards,



    Clowns & Entropy

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