WhyCeleb Magazine

Psycholinguistic analysis: Sam Berel, PhD

What distinguishes the average celebrity from the average person? Among other things, it is their range of emotional intensity. Consider the following figure.

The emotional intensity of an average celebrity fluctuates between +5 and -5. See the red line. In contrast, the emotional intensity of the average person fluctuates at lower intensities, between +2 and -2. See the green line. When a celebrity is cheerful, he is much more cheerful than the average person. When he is depressed, he is much more depressed.

Beyonce is a major celebrity. She’s been dubbed Fun, Fearless Female of the year by Cosmopolitan. She’s a multiple Grammy award winner, winning five Grammys in one year. And, she’s number one on the annual Askmens.com top 100 Most Desirable Women of 2007. She’s most well known for singing, but she is truthfully the ultimate Renaissance woman. Beyonce Knowles is a song writer, a dancer, and a fashion designer with her own label. As a major celebrity you would expect her to show the high emotional intensity that causes the extreme behavior typical of other celebrities. However, in her private life she shows a range of emotional intensities at even lower levels than the average person. She is always in control. You would never see Beyonce ecstatic or in aguish. Why? Why is she so different from other celebrities?

Beyonce is a major celebrity. She’s been dubbed Fun, Fearless Female of the year by Cosmopolitan. She’s a multiple Grammy award winner, winning five Grammys in one year. And, she’s number one on the annual Askmens.com top 100 Most Desirable Women of 2007. She’s most well known for singing, but she is truthfully the ultimate Renaissance woman. Beyonce Knowles is a song writer, a dancer, and a fashion designer with her own label. As a major celebrity you would expect her to show the high emotional intensities that cause the extreme behaviors typical of other celebrities. However, in her private life she shows a range of emotional intensities at even lower levels than the average person. She is always in control. You would never see Beyonce ecstatic or in aguish. Why? Why is she so different from other celebrities?

A psycholinguistic analysis of Beyonce’s words reveals that despite her enormous success, she is under immense pressure. The analysis tells us that she is afraid of becoming obsolete, irrelevant, a mere fad. Beyonce fears of being labeled an “oldie,” “irrelevant,” and “stale.” As she said to Star Jones Reynolds in an interview on Larry King Live, “I guess, you know, people get used to things and it’s not as exciting.” In fact, she admits she has the same feeling about her art “certain things don’t excite me because I’ve been doing this for so long.” The psycholinguistic analysis assigned to these two phrases has an emotional intensity of more than 90%. However, despite her fears and concerns, she is still in complete control of her emotions. In the figure her intensities never exceed the +1 or -1 level, much lower than the intensities experienced by the average celebrity, or even the average person. How is this possible? Why isn’t Beyonce showing signs of stress? Is she incapable of deep emotions? No. On stage she is fabulous and fierce, with her outlandish outfits and her outrageously vivacious dance moves. See, for instance, two of her videos, here and here.

So, how can she be so in control in her private life? Because she has an emotional buffer. Her family functions as an emotional buffer. Her family converts the high emotional waves that surround her into a quiet ripple.

When Beyonce was asked, “What is the biggest challenge of being a celebrity?” she answered, “The hardest thing is balance.” And when she was asked, “What keeps you balanced?” She said “My family, definitely. There’s always one or two family members with me at all times. They’re right there [points to the back of the room]. I don’t go anywhere without someone that loves me and that can tell me the truth. Family is so important to me.” She continues, “My balance comes from my family. I have reality around me, and they tell me when I need to calm down, take it down a couple notches. Then they tell me when I do something good. I think what celebrities lose is that they lose touch with reality.” (The psycholinguistic analysis assigned this segment an emotional intensity of more than 90%. The underlined phrase was assigned an intensity of above 96%.)

Note that the phrase, “they tell me when I need to calm down, take it down a couple notches,” actually describes the buffering process.

Much of the buffering is performed by her father. Matthew Knowles first came to her rescue in 1992, when Beyonce’s first group Girls Tyme, later renamed Destiny’s Child, lost the US talent show, Star Search. To save the day, he decided to manage the group himself. He quit his six-figure salary job as a multi-million dollar equipment salesman at Xerox, and then sold the family home in 1996 to keep the group going. Whenever there was trouble, dad Mathew came to the rescue, financially, physically, and emotionally. But, dad Matthew doesn’t have his own buffer, and unlike Beyonce, he cannot hide his stress.

In the recent past, Beyonce’s father has publicly lashed out against what he felt were transgressions against his daughter. It is not simply transgressions, however, that stir his anger, it is the fear that these transgressions mark the end of her career. Matthew Knowles’ fear of Beyonce’s decline turned him into a transgression monger, an insatiable beast constantly searching for signs or indications of decline. For instance, in her most recent film, Dreamgirls, Beyonce Knowles shared the screen with co-star Jennifer Hudson. It soon became obvious that Jennifer shone brighter in the spotlight, receiving more screen time and stronger singing opportunities. Naturally, the buzz in the industry was focused on Beyonce’s co-star and not on Ms. Knowles herself. In reaction to what he saw as an attempt to damage Beyonce’s career, Matthew Knowles chastised the film’s director telling him that Beyonce’s character in the film was ill-portrayed. In addition, he lashed out against Ms. Hudson. During a screening of the film he and his wife, Tina Knowles, acted coldly towards Jennifer, pretending not to see her when she greeted them that evening. It was also reported that Mr. Knowles “shot her dirty looks” throughout the evening, probably trying to intimidate Ms. Hudson and discourage her from stealing the spotlight from his daughter ever again.

Another incident occurred when Beyonce lost in the Golden Globe awards to two legendary performers. Prince, a legendary singer, won the Best Original Song, and Meryl Streep, a legendary actress, won the Best Lead Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical/Comedy. Matthew Knowles was unable accept the loss. He perceived the loss as a rejection, as a refusal to let Beyonce join the circle of legends, a denial of his most profound wish. Following the event he is quoted as saying, “Today is Martin Luther King’s birthday and it saddens me to say that things have not changed for blacks. Working class blacks and blacks in Hollywood are still being discriminated against. We still have a long way to go.” He felt that Beyonce was denied membership in the select group of legends, that she was measured and found wanting.

Rather than Beyonce becoming upset, it is her father, Matthew, who absorbs all the reverberations. It is her career that is threatened, and yet it is he who lashes out, Beyonce stands calmly by his side, seemingly unaffected, impossibly calm.

An average celebrity combines powerful performances and intense emotions. The Knowles family, Matthew Knowles in particular, is able to divide the two functions. Beyonce is delivering the powerful performance while her father is riding the emotional roller coaster.

The psycholinguistic analysis of Beyonce’s words reveals a separation between performance and emotion. Can we learn something from Beyonce’s mental underpinning? Yes. When you need to deliver a powerful performance, recruit an emotional buffer.