I'm not sure about this (see below) and I'm going to look at my own emails to see if this effect holds true. In an interview in Scientific American, psychologist James Pennebaker says the following:

One of the most interesting results was part of a study my students and I conducted dealing with status in email correspondence. Basically, we discovered that in any interaction, the person with the higher status uses I-words less (yes, less) than people who are low in status. The effects were quite robust and, naturally, I wanted to test this on myself. I always assumed that I was a warm, egalitarian kind of guy who treated people pretty much the same.

I was the same as everyone else. When undergraduates wrote me, their emails were littered with I, me, and my. My response, although quite friendly, was remarkably detached -- hardly an I-word graced the page. And then I analyzed my emails to the dean of my college. My emails looked like an I-word salad; his emails back to me were practically I-word free.

Do you find this is the case in your own emails? If it were true (and I'm not sure it is), it could reveal unacknowledged status implications when you think you're writing to a coequal family member or friend, only to discover hidden status expectations.

What's your take on this? Does unconscious use of pronouns in emails reflect one's status? Does it establish dominance to write low-pronoun emails?