The Secret Life of Pronouns (27 page)

ELIZABETH BARRETT AND ROBERT BROWNING

The idea of measuring language style matching was initially developed to track word use in natural conversations. Conversations should be especially sensitive to the immediate back-and-forth of ideas and shared references implicated in the ways mirror neurons work. By standing back, it is possible to imagine that language style matching can occur on a much broader level. If I hear a rival politician make a speech on a given topic, I might write my own speech in reaction to it several days or weeks later that would linguistically match the original speech. If my spouse is an elegant writer of novels, her writing style could influence the way I write professional journal articles. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that two professional poets who read each other’s work might begin to use function words in similar ways—especially if the two people were passionately attracted to one another. A wonderful example is the case of the mid-nineteenth-century British poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning.

The two poets already had sterling reputations by the time they first corresponded when she was thirty-eight and he was thirty-two. Elizabeth, whose health had been poor since the age of fourteen, had never left home and continued to live with her despotic father while she wrote about emotions, love, and loss. Robert was a vibrant man-about-town whose work was more psychological and analytic. After Elizabeth published a poem that referenced one of his poems, Robert wrote her and professed his love for her work and, more directly, for her—even though the two had never met.

Over the next several months, they corresponded and he proposed marriage—something that she initially resisted by trying to pull away from him. After Robert relentlessly pursued Elizabeth, the two eventually eloped, moving to Italy, where they spent most of their lives together. By all accounts, the marriage was supremely happy, with both continuing to publish their work. The only dark time in their fifteen-year marriage came during the last two to three years, when Elizabeth’s health failed, resulting in her death at the age of fifty-five.

Over the course of their careers together, both Elizabeth and Robert were prolific, producing hundreds of poems. Even before they met, the two tended to use function words similarly. This may explain why the two were so attracted to one another long before they ever corresponded. As you can see in the graph, the LSM statistics indicate that their use of function words was quite similar before they met and for most of their marriage. During their one-and-a-half-year courtship, however, the poetry they wrote diverged. This was a period when Elizabeth struggled with the decision of breaking away from her father and, in her own mind, burdening Robert with her health problems.

As you ponder the figure, you might be curious to know who is responsible for the increasing and decreasing LSM over time. After all, LSM has been likened to a dance between two partners. Can we determine if one of the dancers is more responsible for the occasional faltering in the dance? In fact, we can. Closer inspection of both poets’ use of function words suggests that Robert was impressively steady in his writing style over the course of his career, whereas Elizabeth tended to alter the ways she used function words from one period to the next. For example, during most of their time together, Elizabeth’s use of function words tended to mirror Robert’s. However, during her difficult courtship year and as her health declined toward the end of her life, she tended to withdraw into her own world, writing less like Robert and less similarly to her own writing at other times of her life.

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.

SYLVIA PLATH AND TED HUGHES

Whereas the Brownings’ marriage is often idealized by modern writers, the relationship between Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes is not. Plath was born in Boston and met the British-born Hughes while she was on a Fulbright scholarship at Cambridge University. Both were considered rising young stars in the poetry world. Her writing was often emotional, confessional, and occasionally whimsical. His was more cerebral, often dealing with nature and myth. Four months after meeting at a party, they married—she was twenty-four; he was twenty-six.

During the first four years of their marriage, both experienced personal and professional success. Relative to Plath, Hughes’s writing came easily and he won several awards. About five years into the marriage, Plath’s health started to fail, including several bouts with influenza, an appendectomy, and a miscarriage. She accurately suspected Hughes of being unfaithful—often causing her to fly into violent fits of rage. Within a year, Hughes left Plath for another woman. Plath, who had a history of depression before her marriage, sank into a period of despondency. Even though she continued with her writing, she became increasingly isolated from her friends. Less than a year after her separation from Hughes, at the age of thirty, she committed suicide.

It is interesting to compare the language styles of Plath and Hughes over the course of their relationship—especially in comparison with the Brownings. As is apparent in the figure, Plath and Hughes had very different linguistic styles before they met. Hers was far more personal and immediate compared to his more objective, distanced style. During their relatively happy years, their styles converged to some degree before veering apart during the last three years of her life.

It is also interesting to see how the two couples differed in their language style overall. The much happier marriage of the Brownings was associated with greater language style matching across all phases of their lives compared with the Plath-Hughes relationship. It would be a mistake to conclude that language style matching was the cause of the Brownings’ success or the Plath-Hughes’s marital failure. Instead, the matching of function words between two people merely reflects the fact that the two people tend to think alike. It is even riskier to make bold statements about LSM and relationships by looking at people’s professional writing—especially when the two may be writing about very different topics aimed at different audiences.

BEYOND LOVE: ADMIRATION AND CONTEMPT BETWEEN FREUD AND JUNG

LSM analyses can tell us something about close intimate relationships. The instant messages between dating couples helped reveal which couples were most likely to succeed and fail. The more esoteric poetry analyses allowed us to infer the similarity in thinking between married poets, and, by extension, pointed to the high and low spots in their relationships.

But there is much more to LSM than romantic love and heartbreak. The analysis of function words can be applied to any kind of relationship between two people. As long as we have ongoing communications between people—letters, e-mails, Twitter interactions—we can use the LSM technology to assess the degree to which the correspondents are in synchrony with each other. After studying the language and marital relationships of poets, Molly Ireland and I turned our attention to relationships where a complete set of correspondence existed between two people. Depending on your perspective, this could be a relationship of love, a relationship of identification, an unresolved Oedipal complex, or just two friends.

The relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung lies at the heart of the history of psychology and psychiatry. By the late 1800s, Freud’s ideas about psychoanalysis were beginning to shake the foundations of Western thought. In a series of articles, he argued that people’s personalities and daily behaviors were guided by unconscious processes, many of which were highly sexual. He also promoted the idea that early childhood experiences shaped people’s mental health for the rest of their lives. Not only was Freud a creative thinker but he was also keenly aware of the mass appeal of his approach. One concern he harbored was that his work would be marginalized as reflecting a Jewish way of thinking.

Enter the young, ambitious, and Christian Swiss scholar Carl Jung. Fresh out of medical school, Jung became fascinated by the psychological underpinnings of thought disorders such as schizophrenia and the nature of the unconscious. In 1906, Jung mailed Freud a copy of his first book and Freud reciprocated with a recent article. After a handful of letters back and forth, they became close friends. Most scholars agree that they both liked each other immensely but, at the same time, were not blind to the professional advantages of a close relationship. In fact, after their first face-to-face meeting, Freud proclaimed Jung to be his “dear friend and heir” in a letter. By 1908, Jung was able to write to Freud, “let me enjoy your friendship not as one between equals but as that of father and son. This distance appears to me fitting and natural.”

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.

Between 1906 and 1913, at least 337 letters were exchanged between the two men. During these years, Freud’s reputation skyrocketed. Jung was becoming a force of his own, and by 1911, tension between the two men started to build. Jung felt that Freud was emphasizing sexuality too much; Freud felt Jung was disloyal in not adhering to Freud’s own view. During the last months of their correspondence, Jung accused Freud of arrogance and being closed-minded. Freud responded that that they should “abandon … personal relations entirely.”

Analyzing the function words of the letters between Freud and Jung revealed a predictable pattern in terms of their language style matching. As you can see in the graph on the previous page, their style matching was exceptionally high in their first four years but then dropped precipitously after that. Closer analyses indicated that both men were equally invested in the relationship during the first years. However, toward the end, Freud was the one who disengaged and whose language changed more. Indeed, in one of his last letters to Jung, where he recommended they cease being friends, he added, “I shall lose nothing by it, for my only emotional tie with you has long been a thin thread—the lingering effect of past disappointments.”

UNDERSTANDING CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH LSM

The conversational dance is played out in many ways. Who would have ever imagined that the ways people use pronouns, prepositions, and other function words could tell us so much about their relationships? With a little computer magic, we can use LSM as a barometer of the social links between two people. Or, more specifically, as a sign of the degree to which people are in synch with one another.

What does it actually mean to say that two people are in synch? At the most basic level, people who synchronize their use of function words are paying attention to each other. They may not like each other, they may not trust each other, but they are watching and listening to each other. Fortunately, people avoid spending much time with their enemies and opt to have their best talks with people they like. Most conversations with good friends or lovers are characterized by high LSM for the same reason—they are paying attention to each other.

It is difficult to fathom how two people can quickly adapt to each other’s language styles. As we’ve seen, it generally happens in a matter of seconds when talking with strangers. The two people immediately adjust to each other’s level of formality, concreteness, emotionality, and ways of thinking. Both people are constantly keeping track of which pronouns refer to which people and so keep a running tally in their heads of who the
she
,
he
, or
it
refers to. To keep the conversational ball rolling, both must adapt to shifting topics. In fact, if one of the two conversational partners is momentarily distracted or begins behaving oddly (as when lying), the other person must invest even more energy to maintain the interaction.

It is easy to understand why LSM is so high in both loving conversations and heated fights. Even in most boring discussions among people who do not care about each other, style matching is surprisingly high. Fortunately, the mirror neuron system constantly monitors what is being said and helps speakers convey what needs to be said with minimal effort. There are times, of course, when style matching fails terribly. Some individuals, for example, have great difficulty in language style matching. Certain disorders such as autism can interfere with people’s ability to mimic in general and to socially connect with others. Some researchers believe that autism-spectrum disorders, which include diagnoses such as Asperger’s syndrome, can impede interaction due to disruption in the function of the mirror neuron system.