Psychologists have long believed that we can discern what makes a person tick by analysing their language. The modern study of language has become a highly sophisticated area of research that leverages computational modelling, objective measures of language, and extensive empirical rigor. The links between a person’s mental processes and the words that they say or write have been extensively studied, validated, and applied to fields as diverse as computer science, medicine, sociology, and anthropology, to name just a few. The ability to ‘get inside a person’s head’ by analysing their language patterns from a distance has tremendous appeal and several practical applications, ranging from the patently obvious to the surprisingly nuanced.