#5, Oscar Party!!!!!

I chose to compare the use of first- and second-person pronouns (specifically, "I" and "you") in the acceptance speeches of Oscar winners. I felt that it would be interesting to see who they referred to more - themselves, or the general "you." Could this lead to some information about whether people are, on a subconscious level, more altruistic or selfish while giving acceptance speeches?

These pronouns are, according to Monk, "surface features" of conversation. They are easily and objectively measurable. Monk notes that this kind of measurement is best accomplished from a direct transcript. Rather than attempt to do this myself, I pulled a transcript from Oscar.com. Here is the speech given by Gustavo Santaolalla, winner of best original score:

Thank you so much, members of the Academy. I'm so proud to have work in this movie "Brokeback Mountain." A movie that once again showed us that love is what makes us all very similar, in spite that we can be so different. I want to thank a few people. I want to thank Ang Lee for his vision, his support, his guidance. I want to thank Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry, Annie Proulx for their inspiration. James Schamus, and David Linde everybody at Focus. Kathy Nelson. Robert Messinger at First Artists, my coproducer and brother Anibal Kerpel. My orchestrater, David Campbell, Bob Bernstein, Ron Goldstein. I want to thank my family, my wife Alejandra, my kids Anna, Luna and Don Juan, and last but not least, I want to dedicate this to my mother, a mi madre, to my country, Argentina, and to all the latinos. Para todos Latinos, muchas gracias, thank you.

A quick count reveals that he said "you" a total of only two times, while he said "I" six times. Interestingly, he only said "thank you" twice, once at the beginning and again at the end. Most of the time, he chose to begin a sentence with "I want to thank..." rather than "Thank..." or "Thank you..." This is a bit surprising (one might expect an acceptance speech to be filled with thank you's), but entirely logical. He was just bestowed with an extremely high honor; it's natural to feel a sense of self-pride and to want to reference himself directly. I think that this would be an interesting area of study - how easily does subconscious pride manifest itself in direct, vocal conversation?