The Secret Life of Pronouns (38 page)

276    The quotations about Obama’s use of I-words were written by George Will in the
Washington Post
, June 7, 2009, and by Stanley Fish in the
New York Times
, June 7, 2009.

281    An increasing number of researchers are trying to determine if it is possible to predict terrorism, extremism, and violent behavior through language analysis. Allison Smith, who now works for the Department of Homeland Security, has analyzed both violent and nonviolent extremist groups around the world and found that the ways they express themselves are quite different. For example, those groups that make the most references to in-group affiliations and power or dominance are the ones most likely to engage in violent behaviors.

283    On the southeast tip of Australia is Tasmania, an Australian island the size of England. One of Tasmania’s first and, arguably, most famous explorers was Henry Hellyer. To read an interesting account of how and why he died, see a recent analysis of his letters and journals by Jenna Baddeley, Gwyneth R. Daniel, and me.

284–287    The research on the admissions essays comes with several caveats. In general, traditional academic markers such as college board scores and high school rank are correlated with college grades at levels higher than our language measures (multiple Rs for traditional measures = .435; for language alone = .233; for both = .455, based on an N of 23,794).

APPENDIX: A HANDY GUIDE FOR SPOTTING AND INTERPRETING FUNCTION WORDS IN THE WILD

292    I’m indebted to Claude M. Chemtob for providing a large number of transcripts from people suffering from PTSD.

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