I find subtext and subconscious communication fascinating. Picking apart what people say to expose what they really mean has an intellectual and an emotional satisfaction to it. I was therefore particularly interested in this article on the linguistic analysis of function words, the tiny building blocks (I, the, there, this, etc.) that tie sentences together. We don’t pay them much attention, but it turns out they have interesting predictive properties. For example, when two people are attracted to each other they alter their style of speech to harmonize their usage of these words. What was particular interesting in the context of this blog was the following discovery.
…some of his most interesting work has to do with power dynamics. He says that by analyzing language you can easily tell who among two people has power in a relationship, and their relative social status.
“It’s amazingly simple,” Pennebaker says, “Listen to the relative use of the word “I.”
What you find is completely different from what most people would think. The person with the higher status uses the word “I” less.
This is one of those findings that at first seems counter-intuitive, but actually makes a lot of sense in hindsight. In my own experience at work I see that dynamic all the time. Somebody in my organization reporting a problem to me is likely to say “I investigated X. I think it’s broken.” The both claims credit for work done (I made the effort) while simultaneously softening the message (I think this, but you may think differently). My response is likely to be “We need to fix this”, which actually means “You need to fix it.” What I’m unlikely to say is “I think it needs fixing.” That implies a personal opinion, and that potentially some other opinion out there matters and a decision can’t yet be taken. The impersonal or the plural form is actually a far stronger phrasing. Religions have of course known this for years. Jesus didn’t say “I think the meek are blessed. In my opinion they should inherit the earth. Although they may have trouble hanging onto it.” *
I’d be interested to hear from my readers if these observations match the experience of those in ongoing D/s relationships. In the meantime I’ll leave you with an image (courtesy of Geek Domme) featuring a happy domme and a submissive who doesn’t look to be in a position to make use of any pronouns or function words. Unless ‘Owww!’ or ‘Eeek!’ counts as a function word.
* That last part of the phrasing might be a touch inaccurate. I’m not too up on my biblical quotes.