But some linguists and music historians say the reality is more nuanced. For one thing, frequent use of "I" doesn't signal a haughtier sense of one's status but the opposite, according to James Pennebaker, the social psychologist who invented the text-analysis program used in the 2011 study of song lyrics. The higher a person's standing, the less frequently that person uses 'I' words, according to Pennebaker in his book, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us.