We and they: Pronouns as measures of political identification and estrangement

Abstract

Some people refer to the United States government as "we," some people as "they," in responses to an open-ended survey question on American intervention in Vietnam. This seemingly trivial linguistic difference (and perhaps others) can be included as part of a regular coding operation. In the present instance, race seems to be the most important determinant of pronoun usage, with blacks more likely to refer to the United States as "they" rather than "we." The pattern of other associations to pronoun referent also differs by race: white they-sayers tend to be low in education and in personal trust of other people generally, while black they-sayers are not distinctive in education, but give evidence of solidarity with blacks and of alienation from whites. Not all the results fit together neatly, and limitations of the present measure are noted, but the findings suggest the value of content analysis of linguistic style in verbatim responses to survey questions.