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Using “We” Language

It’s Thursday night, and you’re standing in line waiting to get into a club. In front of you are two couples, and you can’t help but overhear their conversations. As you listen, you notice an interesting difference in their verbal communication. One couple expresses everything in terms of “I” and “you”—“What do you want to do later tonight?” “I don’t know, but I’m hungry, so I’ll probably get something to eat. Do you want to come?” The other couple consistently uses “we”—“What should we do later?” “Why don’t we get something to eat?”

What effect does this simple difference in pronoun usage—“we” rather than “I” or “you”—have on your impressions of the two couples? If you perceive the couple using “we” as being closer than the couple using “I” and “you,” you would be right. “We” is a common way people signal their closeness (Dreyer, Dreyer, & Davis, 1987). Couples who use “we” language—wordings that emphasize inclusion—tend to be more satisfied with their relationships than those who routinely rely on “I” and “you” messages (Honeycutt, 1999).

An important part of cooperative verbal communication is using “we” language to express your connection to others. In a sense, “we” language is the inverse of “I” language. We use “I” language when we want to show others that our feelings, thoughts, and opinions are separate from theirs and that we take sole responsibility for our feelings, thoughts, and opinions. But “we” language helps us bolster feelings of connection and similarity with not only romantic partners but also anyone to whom we want to signal a collaborative relationship. When I went through my training to become a certified Yoga instructor, part of the instruction was to replace the use of “you” with “we” and “let’s” during in-class verbal cueing of moves. Rather than saying, “You should lunge forward with your left leg” or “I want you to step forward left,” we were taught to say, “Let’s step forward with our left legs.” After I implemented “we” language in my Yoga classes, my students repeatedly commented on how they liked the “more personal” and “inclusive” nature of my verbal cueing.