DailyDirt: It's What You Say AND How You Say It
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Studying how language can predict behavior is a fascinating field. As communications are increasingly digital, everyone’s messages are more easily data mined for all sorts of analysis (ahem, and not all of it is done by the CIA). Marketing folks are looking at how catchy phrases might increase sales — which may be why you’re seeing more headlines like “8 simple ways to …” and “one simple trick that …” in ads. Here are just a few other linguistic studies for you to peruse. Also, happy belated National Grammar Day!
- Men who use the pronoun “whom” in an online dating profile receive 31% more responses from women. And you probably don’t even need to use it correctly… well, unless another study concludes that women are significantly better at grammar usage than men. [url]
- Can the language you speak influence your behavior? Speakers of languages with weak future tense grammar (eg. German, Finnish and Estonian) seem to correlate with more future-oriented behaviors such as an increased rate of financial saving, lower rates of smoking and higher rates of exercise, and higher condom usage — compared to speakers of languages with stronger future tense grammar like English and French. [url]
- Four minutes of conversation is about all it takes for a speed dating participant to figure out if there’s any real chemistry between a potential couple. Protip: language analysis suggests you might want to sound sympathetic and not ask too many questions. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: analysis, behavior, big data, communication, data mining, dating, grammar, language, linguistics, predictions, whom
Comments on “DailyDirt: It's What You Say AND How You Say It”
“Studying how language can predict behavior” – NO, it is not the language that determines behavior.
Just read “Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of Earth” by L. Gumilev
This book is very unusual and ground-breaking in many aspects. It is all explained there.
Re: Re:
I don’t think he claimed that language determines behavior. However, it is clearly true that language can predict behavior nonetheless.
That said, I personally will argue that language can strongly influence worldview and therefore behavior.
I grew up in Germany where most of the population speaks 2-3 languages. Language has little to do with your behavior. Society and where you’ve been living is what determines it.
Just Whom do you think you are?
Yes, I get a lot of dates.
Well, they might be onto something
In German, you can say things like “War jetzt eigentlich morgen Probe?” which is literally “Was now incidentally tomorrow a rehearsal?” and is a very complex interweaving of grammatical times and layers and intentions.
Its meaning more or less is “While I should have already surmised from past communication whether or not tomorrow will be sporting a rehearsal, I am currently not able to remember what the information I supposedly received was, consequently being in need of a reconfirmation from somebody with better recollection.”
All that information is compactly transmitted by the diligent composition of logically incompatible temporal adverbs and verbs.
Actually, I met my current girlfriend partly due to my ad reply containing some telltale words like “sintemalen” or “behufs” which would suggest that either I have consciously acquired old-fashioned language or am a vampire of old. My stated age did not entirely support the latter option.