The main aim of this paper is to show that the notion of the ’self-serving bias’, well established in social psychological research, may have an impact on the way in which speakers verbalise certain experiences. I hypothesise that this perceptual bias will interact with other factors; specifically, gender stereotypes (as defined by psychologists and linguists) and modesty (as defined in linguistic pragmatics). I present corpus evidence for the relevance of the self-serving bias and the complex interplay with gender stereotypes and modesty, based on variation between three different causative constructions (CAUSE, X MAKE Y happen, and X BRING about Y) as well as the use of the adverbs cleverly and stupidly. In both cases, my analysis focuses on the cooccurrence with personal pronoun subjects — specifically, differences in terms of person (first vs third) and gender (masculine vs feminine). The most general conclusion I draw is that cognitive (socio-)linguists may be able to formulate interesting new research questions based on concepts drawn from (social) psychology but that constructs developed within linguistics remain highly relevant as well.

We humans are social beings. We live with others. We need each other. It takes a village to raise a child, as an African saying has it. The need for partners, colleagues, and friends applies to almost anything else as well. Also, as more and more people live in cities, while home, work, and recreation have become distinct spheres of life, the circle of others we interact with has expanded enormously. We have even come to speak of the “global village,” though that suggests too much familiarity.

We, humans, write text messages, love letters, and manifestos. By our dress we distinguish ourselves from others. By the food we eat, the company we seek, the histories we present as our own, and the stories we tell we express our emotions, attitudes, and beliefs. We create works of art, to convey a message, to make money, or apparently for no reason at all. We do things, by speaking and in other ways. By our actions we shape the lives we live and the social, cultural, and material world we live in. We are actors.

Humanities are about humans. Done by humans. Relevant to humans. Who are we, those humans? We are material beings, we are bodies, always somewhere in space and time. But we are also thinking beings. For many centuries, the basic understanding of humans has been dualist: we are bodies and souls. But our mental life is tied up closely with our physical existence; dualism separates that which is fundamentally intertwined. But if we understand ourselves as material, would it not be enough to study the body – to have just medicine, biology, chemistry, and physics? What is it about humans that evokes the need for a different way of studying each other and ourselves, the humanities?

Dogs know their humans. They recognize our voices, take their cues from our behavior, and sense our emotions. But the canine understanding of humans is limited; they would not be able to understand even a simple text or argument. They lack a language that makes a conceptual world possible. At least, to us, such seems to be doggish existence. Their understanding of humans is limited and instrumental. They know that which is necessary to be fed, walked, and groomed. They know that which is important to keep their humans serving them.

The humanities are considered here as the systematic effort to understand and evaluate human understanding of ourselves, of fellow humans, and of the social and cultural world we create together. Such a program includes the quest for sound knowledge of particulars and of general patterns, sensitivity to the linguistic and situational challenges that come with any effort to understand others, the hermeneutical interest in dialogue, and the challenge to justify one’s own judgements regarding knowledge and behavior. These may be issues that are important to humans. And perhaps we may be able to go beyond personal opinion and preference, and address these in a scholarly way. However, even if important and scholarly, in the content of science policy one might ask whether the humanities deserve a place in our universities.

Insights from the humanities and alumni of its courses of study find their way into many professional domains. Education is basic to our society, teaching people to read and write, from the plain skills one learns in elementary school to more advanced skills in analysis and composition. Critical analysis of online sources, their rhetoric and their plausibility, is important for all citizens in our time. The humanities make people understand the world we live in, its history, languages, cultures, and places. Understanding others is of great importance in our world, in international relations, trade and tourism, but also at home, as we encounter persons who may have different experiences and convictions. Lack of cultural, historical, and linguistic competence and sensitivity may cost business. Not everyone needs to become a scholar in the humanities, but issues the humanities address are relevant everywhere, for us all, as citizens, as employees, and entrepreneurs, as humans.

How we relate to our past, how we understand ourselves, and how we relate to fellow humans: These are issues of great social importance. Such issues involve interpretation and appropriation. How should we understand texts from another era? This is not merely about understanding Homer’s Odyssey; it also involves laws made a few years ago. Do they still have meaning and significance for us, who live in circumstances different from the time when those laws were formulated? Must we go back to the original meaning to determine their meaning for us, today? If not, what does give the law a meaning that is sufficiently stable to be relevant?

Humanities are academic disciplines in which humans seek understanding of human self-understandings and self-expressions, and of the ways in which people thereby construct and experience the world they live in. Thus, the tentative definition developed in the first chapter. Most humans are “other humans,” near and far. To understand these, we need to be able to communicate – and, hence, we need language. And we need to understand their context, their place, the space they move in. As we seek to understand them, we need to reflect upon the process of understanding and the criteria involved. Our scholarly understanding of others need not be received well, as historical insight may be at odds with the self-understanding of people involved. Such topics will be considered in Chapter 2, “Understanding Others.”

So far, we have focused on humanities as disciplinary efforts to understand other humans, their lives, languages, and literatures. However, what we learn about others we may apply to ourselves. Our predicament is like that of medical students who learn about diseases patients may have, and in the process start to wonder about their own health. But in the humanities, this self-reflective side is not merely a psychological effect of the knowledge acquired. When we encounter others, we might wonder how am I able to get “into their heads”? Who am I, the one who is engaging those others? Is their way of experiencing the world comprehensible to me? Would it appeal to me? Do their norms apply to me? The humanities involve ourselves as humans, as subjects. If we try to grasp how others experience the social and cultural world, participate in it, and thereby contribute to it, we assume them to be humans, who have inner lives just as we do. In the process, we are involved as humans who bring with us our own assumptions and frames when we create our knowledge of those others.