James W. Pennebakers The Secret Life of Pronouns is a broad survey of the compelling and often surprising discoveries to be had from simply counting function words—grammatical ligaments like I, he, the, of, not or could that provide more structure than content. The bleeding edge of computational linguistics this is not, but Mr. Pennebaker is a psychologist, not a computer scientist. His interest is less in pushing the algorithmic envelope than in what linguistics can tell us about emotion and relationships. ....Unfortunately, Mr. Pennebakers attempts to relay these results to a nonexpert audience sometimes get in his own way. Feel free to skip this chapter, he says to impatient readers in an early overview passage but then adds: You may well regret it. Academic texts frequently offer the reader guideposts that can include the skipping of chapters, so at one moment these notes seem earnest, the next, sarcastic. Later Mr. Pennebaker writes, This chapter may not be of relevance to some people, adding: If you do not have family, co-workers, or friends . . . . Such maneuvers carry a tone of defensiveness or antagonism. He would do better to stop fidgeting over his readers level of engagement and simply present his material. online.wsj/news/articles/SB10001424053111904787404576528942850142446
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 15:39:59 +0000
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