By taking consistent actions and avoiding inconsistent ones, we can signal to ourselves that we are the type of person we want to be.

But this is where it gets interesting, because if people want to look certain ways, then framing certain actions as opportunities to confirm desired identities can encourage them to behave accordingly.

Said another way, present tense suggests that speakers don’t just have an opinion, they are relatively certain about it.

The more aversion there is to revealing certain information, the more important it becomes to ask questions that avoid making (positive) assumptions. Avoid presuming the absence of an issue.

But what we forget is that while it’s easy for us to parse, others may not feel the same way. While we have spent lots of time thinking about something, or know a lot about it, we often fail to account for the fact that others may not be in the same position.

Because beyond telling us things about specific people, language also reveals things about society more broadly. The biases and beliefs that shape how we see the world.