Thanks be to Robin Hanson, here is an article about a psychologist who draws conclusions about people from how they use what he calls 'function words': prepositions, pronouns, articles and the like. Apparently function words and content words are controlled by separate brain areas:
If a person with damage to their Broca's area were asked to describe a picture of, say, a girl and an old woman, he or she might say, "girl… ummm… woman… ahh… picture, uhhh… old." Someone with a damaged Wernicke's area might say, "Well, right here is one of them and I think she's next to that one. So if I see over there you'll see her too." To say that Broca's area controls style words and Wernicke's controls content words is a gross oversimplification.
Nevertheless, it is one he seems to be prepared to go with, cutting style at the joints by separating writers into formalists, analysers and storytellers based on their function word distributions. I'm not sure that there is such a clear distinction between style words and content words as Pennebaker thinks, but that doesn't stop this general topic being interesting, and it certainly hasn't stopped me from furiously analysing my own word use. As a result I can now dramatically reveal this blog's top 20 words:
the (84 occurrences), and (67), to (63), a (61), of (55), is (46), it (35), I (30), in (30), that (24), this (20), on (17), you (17), about (15), are (15), as (14), he (13), with (13), being (13), by (12)
And he seemed like such a nice boy...
If you're intrigued, here are some online tests, a website that will find the most common words in some text and a more academic seeming article on the topic by the same psychologist, with some more claims, such as that saying 'I' a lot is a sign of depression.
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