On to North Carolina!
So far we've been to the University of California and
Yale
University,
in search of the source of the 12-most-powerful-words list. Now
Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky has wandered off to Duke University, back
in the 1970s, in research on, oh dear, Neuro-linguistic
programming. It's still the same old list. And an actual
study has still to be found.
She found four sites. Two of them -- "The twelve words of power" on
Everything2.com
and "Real Secrets of Coercive Persuasion" on
maxxsystems.com --
have almost identical wording (and both are unsigned). From
Everything2.com:
In the 1970's, Duke University's
Psychology Department compiled this data after long-term experiments in
Neuro-linguistic programming. These words have been proven to
evoke emotion in a listener or reader.
Well, this has a bit more substance than the California and Yale
reports, but a search on <"Duke University" "Neuro-linguistic
programming" powerful> produces nothing useful. The Wikipedia
entry on
Neuro-linguistic
programming does not mention Duke. (Or Yale. It does
mention the University of California, specifically UC Santa Cruz,
though.)
The other two sites mention Duke but not Neuro-linguistic
programming. First, there's
Mark Joyner's
"Do You Believe It When Someone Says, 'I Won't Lie to You?'", which
begins:
You may have heard that in the late
seventies, Duke University's Psychology Department compiled the top
words that have been proven to evoke emotion in the listener.
Since then, the top 12 words on the list have become known as the most
powerful words in the English language.
The last one,
Dorothy
Leeds's "Power Words + Power Language = Powerful Sales" (copyright
1998), takes us to Duke and lists the magical 12 words, but doesn't
connect them (and cites no source at all for the list of words with
powerful "emotional content"). Duke gets into the picture in her
section "Powerful Speech Avoids Passive Language" (yes! passivity
in language again!):
Social scientists at Duke University
have been able to pinpoint a specific pattern that identifies powerless
speech. Powerless speakers use hedges such as "I think,"
"it seems like," and "you know." Their language is filled with
modifiers such as "kinda" and "sort of."
Say what you think right out, no qualifiers. You'll be a more
powerful person. Try it. Now.
Okay, we've now heard from the West Coast, New England, and the
South. Any other regions ready to weigh in with a claim on the
magic words? Middle Atlantic? Midwest?
Southwest? Rocky Mountain States? The Northern Tier?
Or maybe something from Canada? We're waiting by the phone for
your calls.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at October 11, 2006 07:37 PM