0:00:10.143,0:00:14.244
So some of the smallest[br]most insignificant words

0:00:14.244,0:00:17.995
we use everyday, can reflect[br]a lot about who we are.

0:00:17.995,0:00:20.137
And I say this not as a linguist,

0:00:20.137,0:00:23.506
or a computer scientist[br]but as a social psychologist.

0:00:23.506,0:00:25.743
And today I'd like to tell you a story

0:00:25.743,0:00:28.345
that summarizes a lot of the research

0:00:28.345,0:00:31.060
that my colleagues,[br]my students and I have done,

0:00:31.060,0:00:34.623
that have helped me[br]to come to this realization.

0:00:34.623,0:00:38.137
Now several years ago I was studying[br]the nature of traumatic experience

0:00:38.137,0:00:40.607
and how it is related to physical health

0:00:40.607,0:00:44.927
and what I kept finding,[br]that just completely perplexed me.

0:00:44.927,0:00:48.965
Basically when people have a major[br]traumatic experience in their life,

0:00:48.965,0:00:52.355
they are much more likely[br]to get sick after that event,

0:00:52.355,0:00:54.462
if they keep the events secret,

0:00:54.468,0:01:02.145
than if they actually[br]talk to other people.

0:01:02.145,0:01:07.127
So, this really bugged me.[br]So keeping a secret it seems

0:01:07.127,0:01:09.319
is somehow toxic.

0:01:09.319,0:01:12.320
So this led me to run some experiments

0:01:12.320,0:01:14.442
where we brought people in the laboratory

0:01:14.442,0:01:16.863
and we asked them to write about

0:01:16.863,0:01:19.119
the most traumatic[br]experiences they've had,

0:01:19.119,0:01:21.375
especially if they'd kept them secret.

0:01:21.375,0:01:23.995
And these were big traumas,[br]these were things like rape.

0:01:24.019,0:01:27.808
They were like[br]major public humiliations or failure.

0:01:27.808,0:01:31.285
And the results that we got[br]from this study were stunning.

0:01:31.285,0:01:35.725
We discovered that having people write[br]as little as fifteen minutes a day,

0:01:35.725,0:01:37.740
for 3 or 4 consecutive days,

0:01:37.740,0:01:41.479
brought about meaningful changes[br]in people's physical health

0:01:41.479,0:01:44.015
and even their immune function.

0:01:44.015,0:01:51.006
Translating up, saying experiences[br]into words makes a difference, but why?

0:01:51.006,0:01:53.465
Since then there have been[br]hundreds of studies

0:01:53.465,0:01:55.942
done by labs all over the world[br]trying to answer this

0:01:55.966,0:01:59.764
and they haven't come up[br]with a single explanation.

0:01:59.764,0:02:03.536
My own approach was to[br]actually look at the essays

0:02:03.536,0:02:06.125
that these people wrote,[br]and try to figure out,

0:02:06.125,0:02:08.856
was there something about[br]the essays that could predict

0:02:08.856,0:02:11.565
who would benefit[br]from writing versus who wouldn't?

0:02:11.565,0:02:14.013
I tried and I couldn't figure it out.

0:02:14.013,0:02:16.745
So I got a number of psychologists[br]and other experts

0:02:16.745,0:02:19.689
to read and write hundreds[br]of these essays,

0:02:19.689,0:02:22.974
and they couldn't see a pattern either;

0:02:22.974,0:02:25.053
I needed to try some other strategies.

0:02:25.053,0:02:27.871
So, with the help of[br]one of my graduate students,

0:02:27.871,0:02:30.228
Martha Francis,[br]we wrote a computer program.

0:02:30.228,0:02:33.900
And the idea of this computer program[br]was to go into any given text

0:02:33.900,0:02:36.380
and calculate the percentage[br]of words in that text

0:02:36.380,0:02:39.866
that were positive emotion words,[br]negative emotion words

0:02:39.866,0:02:42.004
or words related to topics such as

0:02:42.004,0:02:46.082
death or sex or violence[br]or religion or family.

0:02:46.082,0:02:49.190
And as long as we were writing[br]the computer program,

0:02:49.190,0:02:52.190
I thought well let's go ahead and[br]throw in some parts of speech,

0:02:52.214,0:02:56.715
pronouns, prepositions. Why?[br]Because it was easy, who cares?

0:02:56.715,0:03:01.413
So, I go back, start to analyze[br]these traumatic essays,

0:03:01.413,0:03:06.013
and quickly discover that the content[br]of what people were writing about

0:03:06.013,0:03:09.243
didn't matter in terms of[br]if they improved in their health or not.

0:03:09.243,0:03:13.683
Instead, it was these junk words,[br]pronouns, and articles,

0:03:13.683,0:03:17.573
and prepositions and so forth,[br]that did matter.

0:03:17.578,0:03:19.388
Now think about this.

0:03:19.388,0:03:23.120
Here people are writing about[br]deeply disturbing issues,

0:03:23.120,0:03:29.034
and the actual topics that dealt with[br]tragedies, devastation, horrible things,

0:03:29.034,0:03:31.512
the topics themselves[br]and the words associated

0:03:31.512,0:03:33.890
with those topics made no difference.

0:03:33.890,0:03:38.622
Instead these little words[br]like "I" and "the" and "and" did matter.

0:03:38.622,0:03:41.889
I'd been looking for the obvious,[br]but in fact

0:03:41.889,0:03:44.758
I'd been paying attention[br]to what people were saying,

0:03:44.758,0:03:47.637
but not how they were saying it.

0:03:47.637,0:03:51.883
So how do I go about[br]analyzing "what" versus "how"?

0:03:51.883,0:03:55.026
Well, it turns out that they're[br]different kinds of classes of words

0:03:55.050,0:03:57.757
that look at this distinction,[br]and one of them is

0:03:57.757,0:04:00.231
if you're looking at[br]what people are writing about,

0:04:00.231,0:04:02.278
you look at what are called content words.

0:04:02.278,0:04:06.582
These are nouns and regular verbs[br]and adjectives and some adverbs.

0:04:06.582,0:04:09.871
These are the stuff of thought,[br]these were the stuff of communication.

0:04:09.871,0:04:11.976
We were trying to talk to somebody.

0:04:11.976,0:04:16.543
Google and search terms[br]are all based on these content words.

0:04:16.543,0:04:19.165
The other group of words[br]are a class of words

0:04:19.165,0:04:21.526
that are generally called function words.

0:04:21.526,0:04:27.084
And function words are made up[br]of the most boring words you can imagine.

0:04:27.084,0:04:31.141
They're made up of pronouns:[br]"I", "me", "he", "she";

0:04:31.141,0:04:37.560
prepositions: "to", "of", "for";[br]auxiliary verbs: "am", "is", "have".

0:04:37.560,0:04:42.128
I'll have to wake you up if I keep talking[br]about these function words.

0:04:42.128,0:04:46.758
But it turns out these[br]function words are really interesting,

0:04:46.758,0:04:52.461
because, first of all, there's only about[br]five hundred function words in English,

0:04:52.461,0:04:54.535
so they account for far less than 1%

0:04:54.535,0:04:57.349
of all the words we know,[br]we hear, we read.

0:04:57.349,0:05:00.494
Nevertheless, they reflect 55% to 60%

0:05:00.494,0:05:03.639
of all the words that[br]we are surrounded with,

0:05:03.639,0:05:06.784
they're everywhere,[br]but we don't pay attention to them.

0:05:06.784,0:05:10.165
In English and in other languages,[br]they're the shortest words there are,

0:05:10.189,0:05:12.710
and when they're spoken[br]or when you're reading,

0:05:12.710,0:05:16.583
they zip into your brain[br]at the speed of less than 0.2 seconds,

0:05:16.583,0:05:20.538
meaning that they're processed[br]essentially non-consciously.

0:05:20.538,0:05:23.110
But there's something[br]even more interesting about them,

0:05:23.134,0:05:26.897
they are social,[br]they are profoundly social.

0:05:26.897,0:05:29.612
Let me give me an example,[br]let's say you're walking along,

0:05:29.636,0:05:32.396
you see a note on the ground,[br]you pick it up and it says,

0:05:32.396,0:05:35.583
"I am placing it on the table."

0:05:35.583,0:05:37.732
Well, that kinda makes sense,[br]kinda doesn't.

0:05:37.732,0:05:40.304
"I'm placing it on the table".[br]There's 2 content words:

0:05:40.328,0:05:41.856
"placing" and "table";

0:05:41.856,0:05:47.955
all the rest are function words:[br]"I", "am", "it", "on", "the".

0:05:47.955,0:05:51.328
Now the reason this doesn't[br]make sense to most of us is

0:05:51.328,0:05:53.444
who was "I"? No idea.

0:05:53.444,0:05:56.687
"Am" implies present tense.[br]When was it written?

0:05:56.692,0:05:59.221
"It"? Pfft, no idea what "it" is.

0:05:59.221,0:06:02.733
"On the table", "the table"[br]means it's a table

0:06:02.733,0:06:04.832
that the author knew about

0:06:04.838,0:06:07.704
and the intended recipient[br]of this note knew about,

0:06:07.704,0:06:09.373
but nobody else did.

0:06:09.373,0:06:13.752
And, in fact, this note only[br]has meaning to the author

0:06:13.752,0:06:15.833
and the recipient of the note

0:06:15.833,0:06:18.994
at a particular time,[br]in a particular location.

0:06:19.008,0:06:22.057
And, in fact, if I took[br]that note to this author now

0:06:22.057,0:06:24.458
6 months later and say,[br]"What's this all about?"

0:06:24.458,0:06:26.649
There's a good chance[br]that the author will say,

0:06:26.673,0:06:28.716
"No idea."

0:06:30.342,0:06:32.960
Function words are social,

0:06:32.960,0:06:34.567
they tell us about the author,

0:06:34.567,0:06:36.234
they tell us about the relationship

0:06:36.234,0:06:37.949
between the author and the recipient

0:06:37.973,0:06:41.578
and the relationship between[br]the author and the topic itself.

0:06:41.578,0:06:45.731
And this is the heart of what[br]I want to talk to you about today.

0:06:45.731,0:06:49.535
By analyzing function words,[br]we start to get a sense

0:06:49.535,0:06:51.945
of who people are,[br]what their relationships are,

0:06:51.945,0:06:55.811
how they think about themselves[br]and how they connect with others.

0:06:57.451,0:06:59.343
Yeah, there're a lot of function words,

0:06:59.343,0:07:02.959
and honestly, I could talk for[br]several hours about function words.

0:07:02.959,0:07:06.634
But I'm going to spare you that[br]and just focus on a couple today,

0:07:06.634,0:07:10.745
to just give you a flavor[br]of why they're so interesting.

0:07:10.745,0:07:12.372
Let's start off with pronouns,

0:07:12.372,0:07:14.519
and let's start off[br]with third-person pronouns

0:07:14.519,0:07:16.287
like "he", "she", "they".

0:07:17.337,0:07:19.718
Now it turns out some people[br]out there in the world

0:07:19.742,0:07:22.543
use these third-person pronouns[br]at high rates

0:07:22.543,0:07:24.947
and other people at low rates.

0:07:24.947,0:07:27.534
What kind of person would use them?

0:07:27.534,0:07:31.232
Well, you have to think about pronouns[br]and all function words

0:07:31.232,0:07:35.784
in terms of where are[br]people paying attention.

0:07:35.784,0:07:37.880
If you are using[br]these third-person pronouns,

0:07:37.904,0:07:40.527
by definition you're paying[br]attention to other people.

0:07:40.527,0:07:43.571
You care about other people,[br]you're thinking about other people,

0:07:43.571,0:07:45.579
and people who use these at high rates

0:07:45.579,0:07:47.709
are much more socially engaged.

0:07:47.709,0:07:49.981
We can analyze emails, tweets and so forth

0:07:49.981,0:07:52.449
and get a sense of someone's[br]social engagement

0:07:52.449,0:07:54.097
just by looking at this.

0:07:54.097,0:07:57.815
How about first-person singular pronouns,[br]"I", "me" and "my"?

0:07:59.335,0:08:01.713
OK, using the attentional arguments,

0:08:01.713,0:08:04.629
someone who's attending[br]to their thoughts, feelings,

0:08:04.629,0:08:08.315
behaviors, to themselves in some way[br]would use these words more.

0:08:08.315,0:08:11.615
What kind of person[br]do you think uses "I" words the most?

0:08:11.615,0:08:14.584
I hope, you're sitting there,[br]you're thinking,

0:08:14.584,0:08:17.377
"Well, somebody who's[br]self-centered, self-important,

0:08:17.377,0:08:23.805
narcissistic, hungry for power[br]and high in status."

0:08:24.345,0:08:26.758
You would be completely wrong.

0:08:27.278,0:08:30.012
In fact the person who is[br]highest in status

0:08:30.012,0:08:33.196
uses "I" words the least.

0:08:33.535,0:08:35.481
Let me rephrase that,

0:08:35.481,0:08:39.376
the higher anybody is in status,[br]the less they use "I" words;

0:08:39.376,0:08:44.207
the lower someone is in status,[br]the higher they use "I" words.

0:08:44.207,0:08:47.750
Now, I discovered this[br]by analyzing emails,

0:08:47.750,0:08:50.745
instant messages, natural conversations,

0:08:50.745,0:08:52.530
business groups and so forth.

0:08:52.530,0:08:54.054
And the effects were huge.

0:08:55.024,0:08:57.388
I looked at these results and I thought,

0:08:57.388,0:09:00.260
"Wow, this must be true for other people

0:09:00.260,0:09:02.472
but it can't possibly be true for me."

0:09:03.292,0:09:04.912
You know I love everybody equally.

0:09:05.665,0:09:08.398
So I go in and analyze my own emails.

0:09:08.398,0:09:10.952
I'm the same as everybody else,

0:09:10.952,0:09:15.183
I look at the email that I get[br]from an undergraduate student,

0:09:15.183,0:09:17.136
"Dear Dr Pennebaker, I would like to know

0:09:17.160,0:09:18.951
if I could possibly meet with you

0:09:18.951,0:09:20.951
because I think I need[br]to change my grade."

0:09:20.975,0:09:25.114
And I write back, "Dear Student,[br]Thank you so much for your email.

0:09:25.114,0:09:29.730
Unfortunately, the way[br]the grade systems work, blah, blah, blah."

0:09:29.730,0:09:32.225
I look at my email to the dean.

0:09:32.225,0:09:35.074
"Dear Dean, I'm Jamie Pennebaker[br]and I would like to ask you

0:09:35.074,0:09:38.070
if I could do this and if I could[br]do that and I could do this."

0:09:38.070,0:09:39.915
And the dean writes back, "Dear Jamie,

0:09:39.915,0:09:43.959
Thank you so much for your email..."[br]and so forth.

0:09:43.959,0:09:49.469
Now everybody is being completely polite,[br]nobody's putting anybody down.

0:09:49.469,0:09:52.151
This is the language of power in status;

0:09:52.151,0:09:54.526
it tells us where people[br]are paying attention.

0:09:54.543,0:09:57.273
A high status person is[br]looking out at the world,

0:09:57.277,0:10:00.532
the low status person tends[br]to be looking more inwardly.

0:10:00.532,0:10:02.247
What about others' states?

0:10:02.247,0:10:07.237
Let's move beyond status,[br]let's look at emotional states.

0:10:07.237,0:10:09.088
You would think that someone would be

0:10:09.088,0:10:10.755
paying more attention to themselves

0:10:10.779,0:10:15.550
if they're in pain. It could be[br]physical pain or emotional pain.

0:10:15.550,0:10:18.568
In fact, if we look at people[br]who are depressed,

0:10:18.568,0:10:20.348
we've done many studies on this,

0:10:20.348,0:10:22.368
and we know that people who are depressed

0:10:22.368,0:10:23.924
pay attention to themselves more

0:10:23.924,0:10:25.900
and they used the word "I" more.

0:10:25.900,0:10:28.615
In fact one of our very first studies[br]looked at the poetry

0:10:28.639,0:10:31.008
of suicidal and non-suicidal poets.

0:10:31.008,0:10:33.580
Now, we did this research[br]where we went through,

0:10:33.580,0:10:35.162
analyzed their poetry,

0:10:35.162,0:10:37.639
and initially I thought,[br]"Well, the big difference is

0:10:37.639,0:10:40.144
in the degree that they use[br]negative, emotion words."

0:10:40.144,0:10:41.852
Not true.

0:10:41.852,0:10:43.541
Suicidal and non-suicidal poets

0:10:43.541,0:10:46.930
all use negative emotion[br]words at high rate.

0:10:46.930,0:10:50.258
I think it's part of the job description.

0:10:50.258,0:10:52.246
(Laughter)

0:10:52.246,0:10:54.904
The big difference was[br]their use of the word "I".

0:10:54.904,0:10:57.946
Suicidal poets use the word "I" more.

0:10:57.946,0:11:00.271
Consider this poem,[br]this is by Sylvia Plath

0:11:00.271,0:11:03.213
who later committed suicide.

0:11:03.213,0:11:06.701
Listen to the way that[br]she uses the word "I"

0:11:06.701,0:11:08.419
and first-person singular.

0:11:09.739,0:11:13.348
I'm taking some lines from her poem[br]"Mad Girl's Love Song".

0:11:14.488,0:11:17.451
I shut my eyes and[br]all the world drops dead;

0:11:17.451,0:11:20.995
I lift my lids and all is born again.

0:11:20.995,0:11:23.547
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

0:11:23.547,0:11:25.575
I fancied you'd return the way you said,

0:11:25.575,0:11:28.003
But I grow old and I forget your name.

0:11:28.593,0:11:30.773
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

0:11:32.633,0:11:35.643
You can almost see Plath

0:11:35.643,0:11:39.217
embracing her sorrow,[br]her misery and so forth

0:11:39.217,0:11:44.486
and you can compare her writing[br]with other poets, non-suicidal poets

0:11:44.486,0:11:46.255
who write about lost love.

0:11:46.255,0:11:50.012
When they do, you can almost see[br]them holding it off from a distance,

0:11:50.012,0:11:55.189
so they're looking at it from a more[br]distant, third-person perspective.

0:11:55.189,0:11:59.868
Now, there's a really interesting,[br]important theory within psychology

0:11:59.868,0:12:02.946
about depression.[br]And people who are depressed

0:12:02.946,0:12:07.099
are thought to be people who are[br]very high in self-awareness or self-focus.

0:12:07.099,0:12:12.164
And part of this is[br]they also tend to be extremely honest.

0:12:12.164,0:12:19.546
In fact, there are many studies[br]showing that they have this deficit

0:12:19.546,0:12:23.287
and they're not able to have[br]positive illusions about ourselves.

0:12:23.287,0:12:25.573
Those of us who aren't depressed[br]get by every day

0:12:25.597,0:12:28.804
by holding these insane illusions[br]about the life.

0:12:28.804,0:12:32.408
But these people are brutally honest.

0:12:32.408,0:12:33.986
Now this made me wonder:

0:12:33.986,0:12:36.384
throw away depression for just a second.

0:12:36.384,0:12:38.384
Could we turn this entire thing[br]upside down

0:12:38.408,0:12:40.174
and find out if depressed people

0:12:40.174,0:12:44.797
or if we could use a computer program[br]as a linguistic lie-detector.

0:12:44.797,0:12:47.535
I mean for anybody.[br]So in fact we did some studies,

0:12:47.535,0:12:49.230
where we brought people in the lab,

0:12:49.230,0:12:51.185
we induced them to lie or tell the truth,

0:12:51.185,0:12:54.233
we analyze court transcripts[br]of people who were all found guilty,

0:12:54.257,0:12:56.679
half of whom were later exonerated,

0:12:56.679,0:12:59.924
and the effects were[br]really quite impressive.

0:12:59.924,0:13:01.999
We did a pretty good job at telling

0:13:01.999,0:13:04.333
if someone who was telling[br]the truth versus lying,

0:13:04.357,0:13:07.367
and one of the best words[br]was the use of the word "I".

0:13:07.367,0:13:08.941
People who tell the truth

0:13:08.941,0:13:12.695
use the word "I" more,[br]owning what they're saying.

0:13:12.695,0:13:16.609
Liars are tending to hold off,[br]distancing themselves.

0:13:17.759,0:13:21.018
Now, lie-detection and depression,

0:13:21.018,0:13:23.907
status, are all some things[br]that we can look at,

0:13:23.907,0:13:26.384
but one of the things that[br]I'm most interested in now

0:13:26.408,0:13:27.729
is looking at groups,

0:13:27.729,0:13:29.920
looking at the relationship[br]between two people.

0:13:29.944,0:13:32.445
Can you tell how two people[br]are getting along

0:13:32.445,0:13:36.872
by analyzing the way that they're[br]using function words with each other?

0:13:36.872,0:13:38.312
And the answer is "yes".

0:13:38.312,0:13:40.832
We'd look at the percentage[br]of each class of words

0:13:40.832,0:13:44.183
and we come up with the metric[br]that we call language style matching.

0:13:44.183,0:13:48.244
And the more that two people are matching[br]in their function word use,

0:13:48.244,0:13:50.041
the more they're on the same page,

0:13:50.041,0:13:53.024
the more they're talking[br]about something in the same way.

0:13:53.024,0:13:54.929
Now one place we started to look at this

0:13:54.953,0:13:56.674
was with speed dating.

0:13:57.326,0:14:00.771
Now, I should tell you[br]I love speed dating,

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(Laughter)

0:14:02.336,0:14:04.866
I would never do it in a million years,

0:14:04.876,0:14:05.956
(Laughter)

0:14:05.956,0:14:08.195
but I encourage all of you[br]to go do speed dating

0:14:08.219,0:14:09.460
and when you do,

0:14:09.460,0:14:10.993
invite a researcher along

0:14:10.993,0:14:13.576
because there is[br]no paradigm that is better.

0:14:14.666,0:14:17.320
We've been involved[br]in speed-dating projects

0:14:17.320,0:14:19.427
where people come in

0:14:19.427,0:14:21.803
and in their 4 minute date,[br]we tape-record it,

0:14:21.803,0:14:23.741
they know we are,

0:14:23.741,0:14:26.819
and then we transcribe the way they talk.

0:14:26.819,0:14:29.327
The more they match in their language,

0:14:29.327,0:14:31.423
the more likely they are[br]to go out on a date.

0:14:31.447,0:14:33.242
We can predict who will go on a date

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at rates slightly better than[br]the people themselves can.

0:14:37.591,0:14:40.231
We've done studies[br]with young dating couples.

0:14:40.231,0:14:43.622
To be in our study, they had to give us

0:14:43.622,0:14:46.123
10 days of their instant messages or IM's.

0:14:46.723,0:14:49.172
And then what we do[br]is we analyze their IM's

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with this style matching,

0:14:51.621,0:14:54.070
and we do much, much better than they do

0:14:54.070,0:14:56.499
at predicting if they'll be[br]together 3 months later.

0:14:56.523,0:14:58.362
(Laughter)

0:14:58.362,0:15:01.077
The fact is, is these words[br]are telling us how individuals

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and pairs of people are connecting.

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What about groups?

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Now this is an area[br]that we're now working at.

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We're looking at working groups,

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some are groups that we've worked with,

0:15:10.513,0:15:12.037
people from the business school,

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we'd look at people in[br]the get-to-know-you groups,

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we do educational groups.[br]And what we're finding is

0:15:16.932,0:15:19.836
by looking at a group of,[br]say, 5 or 6 people,

0:15:19.836,0:15:22.598
we can now get a sense[br]of how productive the group will be,

0:15:22.622,0:15:25.258
and also how cohesive the group will be,

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simply by looking at the style matching.

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Now here's where things are[br]starting to get interesting:

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by tracking a group that's interacting

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and say they're all interacting online,

0:15:35.770,0:15:39.551
we can have a computer monitoring[br]how the group is behaving.

0:15:39.551,0:15:40.867
Imagine for example,

0:15:40.867,0:15:43.544
you are in this group,

0:15:43.544,0:15:46.211
and a computer coach comes to your group

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every now and then,[br]and a message comes and says,

0:15:50.190,0:15:53.296
"You guys are not paying attention[br]to one another,

0:15:53.296,0:15:57.396
you need to be more attentive to what[br]the other people are saying," or

0:15:57.396,0:16:00.396
"You guys for the last few minutes[br]have strayed off topic,

0:16:00.396,0:16:03.716
try to get back on topic,"[br]or that loud mouth in the group,

0:16:03.716,0:16:07.566
the computer comes in and says,[br]"John, for the last 5 minutes

0:16:07.566,0:16:11.142
you said 50% of the words,[br]why don't you stand back

0:16:11.142,0:16:13.884
and encourage others to talk?" (Laughter)

0:16:13.884,0:16:17.199
Well, we have now created[br]a program that does this,

0:16:17.199,0:16:20.602
and we've now tested it out[br]with hundreds of groups

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and we are getting very promising results.

0:16:24.703,0:16:27.912
Now, you can start to see[br]why I'm so excited

0:16:27.912,0:16:30.244
about this world of function words,

0:16:30.244,0:16:33.665
that we're now taking this[br]in all these directions,

0:16:33.665,0:16:36.249
that I never would've thought about.

0:16:36.249,0:16:39.533
We've been looking at it in terms[br]of looking at historical records.

0:16:39.533,0:16:43.876
Can you tell if a particular explorer[br]committed suicide or was murdered?

0:16:43.876,0:16:45.611
We've done a project on that.

0:16:45.611,0:16:48.056
Can you look at a company and get a sense

0:16:48.056,0:16:51.307
of how their internal[br]communications are working?

0:16:51.307,0:16:53.355
How well they are connecting[br]with the people

0:16:53.355,0:16:55.283
in their company or with their clients.

0:16:55.283,0:16:59.752
We look at corporate earnings reports[br]or the quarterly phone calls

0:16:59.752,0:17:03.112
to get a sense of the internal[br]group dynamics of the company.

0:17:03.112,0:17:04.636
We've worked with the government

0:17:04.660,0:17:06.688
to try to get a sense of terrorist groups

0:17:06.688,0:17:09.813
and if they are likely to behave badly.

0:17:09.813,0:17:13.155
We've helped people sort out[br]their love lives.

0:17:14.595,0:17:15.978
You can start to see that

0:17:15.978,0:17:19.721
by harnessing the power[br]of these function words,

0:17:19.721,0:17:22.948
we can get a sense[br]of individuals and groups

0:17:22.948,0:17:25.325
and how people are connecting.

0:17:26.305,0:17:28.224
Now, what I would urge you to do,

0:17:29.185,0:17:31.805
I'd like you to go home tonight

0:17:31.805,0:17:34.557
and I want you to start looking[br]at your emails,

0:17:34.557,0:17:37.728
your tweets, your IM's or whatever,

0:17:37.728,0:17:41.401
and in doing that,[br]what I hope you start to see is,

0:17:41.401,0:17:43.306
first of all you learn a little bit more

0:17:43.306,0:17:45.068
about your relationships with others,

0:17:45.092,0:17:46.903
but more than anything,

0:17:46.903,0:17:49.411
I hope you'll learn[br]a little bit about yourself.

0:17:49.411,0:17:50.800
Thank you very much.

0:17:50.977,0:17:56.459
(Applause)