“I” before “we”?

After another great service a couple of Sundays ago, I went home with good intentions to look up a study done at the University of California involving linguistics and the parallel between the use of ‘I’ or ‘me’ and an individual’s degree of self-focus.

I must have misspelled the professor’s name. I couldn’t find the exact study.

This is what I did find:

https://hbr.org/2011/12/your-use-of-pronouns-reveals-your-personality

“In the 1990s, James Pennebaker helped develop a computer program that counted and categorized words in texts, differentiating content words, which convey meaning, from function words. After analyzing 400,000 texts—including essays by college students, instant messages between lovers, chat room discussions, and press conference transcripts—he concluded that function words are important keys to someone’s psychological state and reveal much more than content words do”

 For example, he learned that pronouns tell us where people focus their attention. The most simple is the use of “I”. Chronic use is an indicator of self-focus. Most people can figure this out without looking at it from the perspective of grammatics.

I was tickled with his reference of ‘function words’. I always thought all words had function – how wrong I was. Turning the topic on its head, I pondered…Is a lack of the use of the word ‘I’ mean that there is neglect of the self? A predisposition to being too focused on what’s going on around you and not taking care of yourself? In my opinion, nurses fall in the category of the latter. It’s a risk for all in the medical profession.

I’m going to do the New Year different. I’m going to make and share a list of my favorite things, no resolutions. Self-improvement is already an ingrained part of my character.

* Thank you for indulging me with a read of this post. I feel I meandered…and probably used the word “I” too much.

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