The increasing use of first-person singular pronouns, such as “I” and “me,” around the world suggests a rising sense of individualism, according to a study led by Feng Yu at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Analyzing pronoun frequency data from the Google Ngram Database, which contains 4% to 6% of all the books in the history of human publication and includes nine languages (American English, British English, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Spanish, Russian, and Italian), researchers found that between 1949 and 2008 the use of first-person singular pronouns (vs. first-person plural pronouns, such as “we” and “us”) increased in all languages except for British English. Assuming that area-specific languages, such as American English and Simplified Chinese, are good indicators of the cultures they represent, the authors conclude that a majority of these cultures became more individualistic over time. The authors acknowledge that a larger range of cultural value indicators and more diverse sources of data are required to bolster the robustness of their conclusion.
Source: Cultural Value Shifting in Pronoun Use
