Changes in Pronoun Use in American Books and the Rise of Individualism,1960-2008

Abstract

Change over time in culture can appear among individuals and in cultural products such as song lyrics, television, and books. This analysis examines changes in pronoun use in the Google Books ngram database of 766,513 American books published 1960-2008. We hypothesize that pronoun use will reflect increasing individualism and decreasing collectivism in American culture. Consistent with this hypothesis, the use of first person plural pronouns (e.g., we, us) decreased 10% first person singular pronouns (I, me) increased 42%, and second person pronouns (you, your) quadrupled. These results complement previous research finding increases in individualistic traits among Americans.

Keywords

language cultural psychology values attitudes beliefs

American culture has arguably become more individualistic in recent decades, promoting greater self-focus and more emphasis on the individual person rather than the group (Baumeister, 1987; Myers, 2000). These changes in culture are reflected in generational change, with recent samples more likely to endorse individualistic traits such as self-esteem, agency, and narcissism (Gentile, Twenge, & Campbell, 2010; Stewart & Bernhardt, 2010; Twenge & Foster, 2010; Twenge, Campbell, & Gentile, in press; for a review, see Twenge, 2006). However, there is still debate over whether generational changes exist at all, including in individualism (e.g., Trzesniewski & Donnellan, 2010).

In addition, culture is more than a collection of individuals. Culture includes assumptions and patterns shared by members (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952). These patterns are often reflected in cultural products such as TV shows, song lyrics, and books (Kim & Markus, 1999; Lamoreaux & Morling, 2012; Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008). As Lamoreaux and Morling (2012) argue, it is important to study cultural products for at least three reasons. First, culture includes the context as well as the person, and cultural products capture culture “outside the head.” Second, cultural products are not subject to the biases of that plague self-report measures, such as reference group and social desirability effects. Third, and perhaps most important, cultural products shape individuals’ ideas of cultural norms and “common sense.” People’s behavior is often influenced by their beliefs about what others in their culture believe and do, even if these assumptions are erroneous (e.g., Zou, Tam, Morris, Lee, Lau, & Chiu, 2009). Cultural products such as song lyrics, TV shows, and books are likely one of the most common sources for perceptions of cultural norms.

Until recently, it was extremely labor-intensive to unearth cultural change by analyzing cultural products. However, new technologies such as word coding computer programs (for a review, see Pennebaker, 2011) have made it possible to analyze language use in cultural products such as song lyrics (DeWall, Pond, Campbell, & Twenge, 2011). Even then, such studies are limited in the number of products they can analyze. For example, the song lyrics study examined only the 10 most popular songs for each year between 1980 and 2008. A study of changes in community feeling and fame in television shows aimed at 10- to 12-year-old children between 1967 and 2007 analyzed the descriptions of the shows rather than the language in the shows themselves (Uhls & Greenfield, 2011). Fortunately, more powerful technology has now made it possible to analyze language use over time in great numbers of books, another cultural product. The Google Books ngram viewer allows users to search the full text of a corpus of 5 million books (Michel, Kui, & Presser, 2010). The corpus is so large that it would take 80 years for someone to read all of the books for the year 2000 alone (Michel et al., 2010). Analyzing books also provides a broader view of cultural change than the previous studies on song lyrics and young adolescents’ TV shows, as books cover a wider variety of topics and the database includes a cross-section of books, not just those that were the most popular.

In the present research, we examine changes in language use, specifically pronouns, in books included in the Google Books database. Language plays a central role in culture and is one of the essential elements through which culture is embedded and passed on (e.g., Fiske, 2000). This link between language and culture can even be seen within a single individual. For example, the use of specific languages (e.g., English) is linked to more independent self-concepts in bilingual individuals (Marian & Kaushanskaya, 2004).

Language use in books could reflect cultural change in at least three ways. First, language use reflects the viewpoints of book authors, showing change in the values and attitudes of an influential portion of the population. Second, books may mirror a market-driven assessment of what people want to read. Thus, they capture changes in the preferences of the population of Americans who read books. Third, language use in books may be a microcosm of the language use of people living in that time. For example, a fiction writer may aim to capture realistic modern dialogue. Thus, language use in books captures cultural change from the individual level (the author) to the group level (trends in market-based appeal and in language use among the population). Lamoreaux and Morling (2012) label these influences as “direct creation by elites” and “subsequent popularization by ‘consumers’” (p. 301). Pronoun use is a visible norm influenced by collective imitation, especially by high-status adopters. As Markus and Kitayama (2010) demonstrate in their Mutual Constitution Model, cultural products and individuals influence each other, with individuals (both creators and consumers) shaping cultural products and cultural products in turn shaping individuals’ cultural views. Although this model was originally developed to explain cross-cultural differences, it has clear applicability to cross-time differences in culture as well.

A discussion of language and culture should also include a brief discussion of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (Whorf, 1956; see Chiu, Lee & Kwan, 2007, and Holtgraves & Kashima, 2008, for recent reviews from social and cultural psychology). The basic idea behind this hypothesis is that language, cognition, social behavior, and culture are linked together in a self-reinforcing way. To provide an early research example, Conklin (1955), based in part on lab research in psychology (Brown & Lenneberg, 1954), studied the color categories used by the Hanunóo people of the Philippines. He found that the color system was different than that used in the West, with a first level set of colors of black, white, red, and green. These colors also had interesting cultural properties. For example, because green was so prevalent in the jungle surroundings, it was devalued as a decorative color.

Given that language and culture link to something as basic as color perception, it is reasonable to make the case that language could influence and be influenced by a wide range of social-cultural processes (Holtgraves & Kashima, 2008). In an important demonstration of this process, and one closely related to the present research, Kashima and Kashima (2003) examined the link between affluence, climate change, and individualism. They found that rising affluence and climate change predicted individualism. However, this outcome was moderated by language use; for example, languages with pronoun drop were less individualistic.

Language use in books may differ from language in everyday speech. The language in books is a purposeful expression involved in the creation of a cultural product, with a good deal of thought put into the creation. Thus, books may differ in their cultural expression compared to spontaneous everyday speech. For example, if we were able to get historical speech samples using something like the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR; Mehl, Pennebaker, Crow, Dabbs, & Price, 2001), would the results be the same? Based on recent research, we would speculate that the answer is yes. Oishi, Graham, and Kesebir (2012) reported evidence for similar patterns in cultural changes in the meaning of happiness in U.S. Presidential speeches, dictionaries, personal letters, and books. At least based on this research, we do not see evidence that language in books is unique, but clearly much more work needs to be done on this question.

Pronoun Use

Pronouns are an especially useful source for examining cultural changes in language (Brown & Gilman, 1960). They are a well-defined group of words in English that has not changed substantially since “ye” and “thou” began to disappear in the 1800s (e.g., Walker, 2007). Pronouns have also been linked to specific cultural systems such as individualism and collectivism. Priming first person singular pronouns (e.g., I, me) activated individualistic self-representations (Gardner, Gabriel, & Lee, 1999) and increasing self-awareness with a camera or mirror caused people to infer that pronouns were first person (Davis & Brock, 1975). Individualistic cultural stances are also associated with disallowing pronoun drop (e.g., dropping the “I” at the beginning of a sentence; Kashima & Kashima, 1998). Consistent with an individualistic system, pronouns such as “I” and “me” connote self-focus and an emphasis on the lone individual instead of the group. Second person pronouns (e.g., you, your) also indicate individualism as they separate the actor and the other. Both first and second person involve what language scholars call “self-ascription” (Wechsler, 2010).

In contrast, first person plural pronouns are linked with collectivism. Korean (i.e., more collectivistic) participants were more likely than American (i.e., more individualistic) participants to guess that an ambiguous pronoun was plural (Na & Choi, 2009). Those who use first person plural pronouns (such as “we”) report greater satisfaction with their romantic relationships (Slatcher, Vazire, & Pennebaker, 2008).

In sum, first person plural pronouns (e.g., we, us) are linked to collectivistic cultural stances, whereas first person singular (e.g., I, me) and second person singular (e.g., you, yourself) are linked to individualistic cultural stances. A culture with increasing cultural individualism should show pronoun use changing in this direction.

The Present Study and Hypotheses

A new, extensive database, the Google Books ngram viewer, allows the examination of language use in 5 million books, 4% of those ever published (Michel et al., 2010). Thus, it provides a much more extensive corpus to document changes in language than, for example, the study on song lyrics (DeWall et al., 2011), which examined only 10 songs per year. The ngram database reports usage frequency by dividing the number of instances of the word in a given year by the total number of words in the corpus in that year, thus correcting for changes in the number of published works and their length.

In the present study, we examined the frequency of the use of specific pronouns in American books published in English between 1960 and 2008; this subset of the Google Books database includes 766,513 books. We chose 1960 as a starting point because many authors have noted that the pace of cultural change in the United States, particularly in individualism, accelerated beginning in the late 1960s through the 1970s (Baumeister, 1987; Fukuyama, 1999; Myers, 2000; Yankelovich, 1981). Trends before that time may be more complex and difficult to quantify. For example, some studies find a decline in individualistic traits such as assertiveness during the 1940s to early 1960s postwar era (e.g., Twenge, 2001). The ending point was 2008, the last year available in the ngram database.

We made the following specific hypotheses based on past research:

Hypothesis 1: First person plural pronouns (e.g., we, us) will decrease in use. These pronouns connect the self to others, characteristic of collectivistic systems.

Hypothesis 2: First person singular pronouns (e.g., I, me) will increase in use, as they refer to the individual self.

Hypothesis 3: Second person pronouns (e.g., you, your) will increase in use. This increase should be limited to second person singular. However, most second person pronouns in English do not distinguish between singular and plural, with the exception of “yourself” (singular) versus “yourselves” (plural). Based on the difference in frequency between these two words (“yourself” was 11.5 times more common than “yourselves” in Google Books 1960-2008), we assume second person singular is more common overall. Nonetheless, we also separately analyze “yourself” and “yourselves” to determine if the singular form has the greater increase.

We had no specific predictions for other pronouns but collected and analyzed them to obtain a view of changes in all pronouns (including, for example, third person pronouns).

Method

We examined the American English corpus from the Google Books “ngram” database. Usage statistics are available through 2008, though results after 2000 should be interpreted with caution as Google Books was instituted in that year, introducing small changes to the selection of books (Michel et al., 2010). We examined 31 pronouns (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Changes in Pronoun Use in American books, 1960-2008

	r With Year	Beta for Year Squared	Use 1960 vs. 2008 (SD)	d	% Change
First person singular (I, me, my, mine, myself)	.79***	.55***	.48%-.68% (.078)	2.56	42%
First person plural (we, us, our, ours, ourselves)	−.38**	.80***	.29%-.26% (.023)	−1.30	−10%
Second person (you, your, yours, yourself, yourselves)	.90***	.40***	.12%-.48% (.105)	3.43	300%
Second person singular (yourself)	.92***	.32***	.0030%-.0083% (.0018)	2.94	177%
Second person plural (yourselves)	−.67***	.52***	.00046%-.00031% (.000069)	−2.17	−33%
Third person singular (he, him, his, himself, she, her, hers, herself, it, its, itself)	−.32***	.77***	1.07% - .98% (.087)	−1.03	−8%
Third person plural (they, them, their, theirs, themselves)	−.43**	.64***	.55%-.50% (.033)	1.52	−9%
All singular (including second)	.42**	.83***	2.27%-2.57% (.21)	1.43	13%
All plural	−.42**	.72***	.84%-.77% (.055)	−1.27	−8%
All pronouns	.27	.87***	3.18%-3.30% (.247)	.49	4%

Note: Usage means and d (difference in terms of standard deviations) are based on the linear regression line at 1960 and 2008. The Beta for year squared is from a regression equation including year (centered) and year squared.

p < .01. ***p < .001.

The corpus contains 4% of books published since the 1800s. These books were likely not truly randomly selected (Michel et al., 2010); however, we assume these books were not selected in a way dependent on pronoun use frequency that also varied systematically with year. In addition, the ngram database is by far the largest database available of digitized books. As described in more detail in Michel et al. (2010), Google used 100 sources such as university libraries and publishers to generate a comprehensive catalog of books. The books were digitally scanned and the corpus was winnowed of serial publications, multiple editions, and books with poor print quality, unknown publication dates, or miscoded language (e.g., a book listed in the library catalog as being written in English that was not actually in English). Country of publication (in this case, the United States) was determined by 100 bibliographic sources (Michel et al., 2010).

Our unit of analysis was the frequency of the use of a pronoun in a specific year; we then added these frequencies together within pronoun categories (e.g., first person singular consisted of I, me, my, mine, and myself). We then tested for changes in those frequencies over time by examining the correlation between year and frequency, with an n in each analysis of 48 (the number of years). Our results thus refer to the annual change in the frequency of the use of pronouns.

By definition, correlations represent the direction and fit of the linear relationship between the variables of interest—here, the frequency and year. However, it is also important to know the simple magnitude of the change from Time 1 (1960) to Time 2 (2008). Thus, we include a second effect size, d, based on the two endpoints of the regression line divided by the standard deviation.

The Google Books database does not include any information on the types of books (e.g., fiction vs. nonfiction). As a substitute, we obtained the percentage of books published in the United States each year that were fiction from the Statistical Abstract of the United States (U.S. Census, 2004); statistics were available only for 1960-2002. We will use these statistics as controls in the analyses to rule out the possibility that any changes over time are caused by shifts in types of books. However, we have no way of knowing if these percentages are the same as those in the database. In addition, the 1982 edition of the Abstract notes that an increase in the number of books between 1980 and 1981 was “due in part to a major improvement in the recording of paperbound books,” and more of these paperback books are likely to be fiction. Thus, the measurement differed with time, so these analyses should be interpreted with caution. Fortunately, the percentage of fiction books did not vary much by year, ranging from a low of 7% to a high of 15%.

Results

As predicted in Hypothesis 1, first person plural pronouns (we, us) decreased in use between 1960 and 2008 (see Table 1 and Figure 1). First person singular pronouns (I, me) increased 42%, confirming Hypothesis 2. The results were similar when controlled for the percentage of books that were fiction: for first person singular (Beta = .62, p < .001), and for first person plural (Beta = –.63, p < .001). In a regression equation with year as the dependent variable, first person singular increased (Beta = .91, p < .001) and first person plural decreased (Beta = –.56, p < .001). These results were also similar when controlled for the percentage of fiction books: for first person singular, Beta = .79, p < .001; for first person plural, Beta = –.67, p < .001.

Figure 1.

Changes in First Person Singular, First Person Plural, and Second Person Pronoun Use in American Books, 1960-2008

Second person pronouns also increased (you, your; confirming Hypothesis 3), with usage quadrupling (a 300% increase) between 1960 and 2008. The results were similar when controlled for the percentage of fiction books (Beta = .84, p < .001). We then looked at the only forms of second person pronouns that are specifically singular and plural. “Yourself” (singular) increased, while “yourselves” (plural) decreased (see Table 1).

The linear trend was stronger than the curvilinear trend for first person singular and second person pronouns (see Table 1). First person plural pronouns, however, showed a stronger curvilinear trend, decreasing from the 1960s to the 1980s and then rising again after 1984. However, first person plural pronoun use in the 2000s did not return to the higher level of the 1960s, resulting in an overall decline.

Analyses restricted to 1960 to 2000 produced the same pattern of results.

Discussion

Changes in pronoun use in American books suggest a cultural trend toward greater individualism and a parallel trend toward less collectivism. First person plural pronouns such as “we” decreased in use by 10%, and singular pronouns such as “I” and “me” increased 42%. Previous research linked first person singular pronouns to individualism and first person plural pronouns to collectivism (e.g., Gardner et al., 1999; Kashima & Kashima, 1998; Na & Choi, 2009).

Second person pronouns such as “you” and “your” quadrupled, also consistent with individualism, as they separate the actor and other (Wechsler, 2010). The large increase in second person might partially reflect an increased tendency to directly address the reader and include him or her in the dialogue, another indicator of individualism (e.g., “what you can do,” “your best life”). However, this is speculative.

These cultural-level data can also be considered in light of research on individual pronoun use. In personal correspondence and speech, first person singular pronouns (I, me) are associated with increased individual self-focus, low status, honesty, depression, and a more personal, expressive style. Higher status people use more first person plural (we, us) and second person (you, your) pronouns (for a review, see Pennebaker, 2011). Pennebaker’s studies differ from the current analysis as they examine individual (as opposed to cultural) effects and personal communication (as opposed to books). Nevertheless, if we try to link these two areas of research, it would suggest that language has shifted to become less hierarchical, more self-focused, and more expressive (possibly depressive). This is consistent with some elements of individualism (increased emotional expression, less hierarchy overall, more self-focus) but not necessarily others (more overconfidence and claiming of status). Additionally, the use of second person (you, your) is associated with increased status and increased over time, so the status results are best described as mixed.

These results are consistent with previous research finding an increase in individualism in American cultural products (DeWall et al., 2011; Twenge, Abebe, & Campbell, 2010; Uhls & Greenfield, 2011). Most research has also found increases in individualistic traits and decreases in collectivistic traits among American individuals over time (e.g., Konrath, O’Brien, & Hsing, 2011; Twenge, Campbell, & Freeman, 2012; Twenge & Foster, 2010; cf., Trzesniewski & Donnellan, 2010), though with effect sizes smaller than those here. This difference in effect size, with cultural products showing larger differences than measures of individual self-concept or personality, is consistent with past research showing that the differences in cultural products are larger than the differences among individuals across cultures (Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008). Based on the theoretical assumption that there is a mutually constitutive system between culture and the individual (Markus & Kitayama, 2010), the present results suggest that the changes in the culture are more pronounced than the changes in the individual selves that constitute the culture. Given the many influences on individual personality, including genetics, this seems reasonable.

Limitations

The Google Books database does not include information on types of books (e.g., fiction vs. non-fiction). We attempted to compensate for this limitation by gathering information on types of books per year from the Statistical Abstract; however, the way books were recorded changed over time, creating measurement issues. After 1981, when the measurement was constant and the changes in the pronouns were most pronounced, the percentage of fiction books barely differed (ranging from a low of 10% to a high of 12%). This suggests that changes in the proportion of fiction versus nonfiction books do not explain the results.

The database also does not include information on how many books are single- versus multiple-authored and whether this varies by year. Changes in authorship patterns would explain the results if the authors of multiple-authored books refer to themselves as “we” instead of “I” and the number of multiple-authored books is decreasing (as that would result in fewer uses of “we” and more of “I”). Reliable statistics on single versus multiple authorship of books were not available. However, multiple authorship of journal articles has increased significantly over time across several disciplines (e.g., Cronin, 2001; Dillon et al., 1992; Hudson, 1996; Khan, Nwosu, Khan, Dwarakanath, & Chien, 1999; King, 2000). Thus, if authorship explained the results, the pattern would be the opposite of what we found. However, we cannot be certain that the increase in multiple authorship was also true of books.

The use of first person plural pronouns such as “we” decreased in use between the 1960s and the 2000s, but the pattern was curvilinear with the lowest use in the early 1980s. Perhaps American culture in the 1990s and 2000s had ever-higher levels of individualism but also growing levels of communalism. Further research should explore why first person plural pronouns showed a curvilinear change over time.

We examined only the American English corpus of books as we were interested in cultural change within one culture. This means the results cannot be generalized to other cultures. Future research should explore whether cultural products in other countries and cultures also reflect a rise in individualism.

Conclusion

In sum, culture is tied to language use. The present research used newly available tools to track differences in written language use that serve as markers of individualism and collectivism. The results are consistent with American culture becoming increasingly individualistic over the last half century.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank Candice Davis, Van Ethan Levy, and Grace Rasmusson for data entry.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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