{"id":323,"date":"2010-07-31T19:27:09","date_gmt":"2010-07-31T19:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=323"},"modified":"2010-11-19T17:18:26","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T17:18:26","slug":"i-know-what-youre-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/07\/31\/i-know-what-youre-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"I know what you&#8217;re thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First of all, I want to introduce you to <a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/\" target=\"_blank\">this blog<\/a>,\u00a0which admirably sums up in its every post, my feelings about language, grammar and pedantry \u2013 to whit, it take only a modest level of education to criticise other people for supposed infringements such as split infinitives, dangling participles or what have you, but none of this has anything to do with understanding how language works, which is a more complicated undertaking. If you prefer not to split infinitives, then that is primarily a reflection of your taste, and says little or nothing about how English grammar actually works or is used by its speakers.<\/p>\n<p>So, while it may be entertaining to read (and certainly to write) about grammatical \u201cpet peeves\u201d, this caveat should be borne clearly in mind by writer and reader alike. X may very well drive you crazy, but if X is fairly common among native English speakers (from any country) then that says far more about you than it does about them or about X.<\/p>\n<p>All that having been said, let\u2019s start with a very common English stumbling block. For some reason, English speakers who have no problem at all selecting \u201cI\u201d or \u201cme\u201d when talking only about themselves reach for the wrong pronoun when talking in the plural. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Should you care about getting this right<\/span> (and, as mentioned, there\u2019s no particular reason why you should) the rule is very easy to apply. We don\u2019t even have to approach the baby slopes of grammar terminology. I can give you the rule without even talking about \u201csubject\u201d and \u201cobject\u201d (which is the reason for the distinction).<\/p>\n<p>Try these five sentences. Which is right?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Me and Jo are going swimming later, do you want to come?<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s not your problem, just let Chris and I handle it.<\/li>\n<li>Sam and I will go first, followed by you and then the rest.<\/li>\n<li>We\u2019ve talked about it and both me and Pat feel we should contribute.<\/li>\n<li>Just give it to either me or Sandy on your way past.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ready for the answer? Here it comes\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The third and fifth are correct. The others are all wrong. How do you know? Just remove the other person.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Me is going swimming<\/span><\/strong> later, do you want to come?<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s not your problem, just <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">let I handle it<\/span><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I will go<\/span><\/strong> first, followed by you and then the rest.<\/li>\n<li>We\u2019ve talked about it and <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">me feels<\/span><\/strong> we should contribute.<\/li>\n<li>Just <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">give it to me<\/span><\/strong> on your way past.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, the point is that anyone who cares can easily get this right if they want, but if you don\u2019t care, then it should only affect that small percentage of people who both know and get cross about it. It makes me mildly annoyed when, in dramas, a character who would be quite likely to both know and care is given lines by a writer who either doesn\u2019t know or doesn\u2019t care and so gets it wrong, but I\u2019ve learned to live with it.<\/p>\n<p>What I find more interesting is some of the psychology which these facts about language and the presence of these rules brings along for the ride. Because people remember having had \u201cme and X\u201d corrected to \u201cX and I\u201d, the latter seems to have a more prestigious status in some people\u2019s minds, so I suspect that some people who say \u201cX and I\u201d when \u201cme and X\u201d would have been correct are overcorrecting. They wanted to say \u201cme and X\u201d, they knew that sounded right, but they corrected it to \u201cX and I\u201d at the last minute. In some cases, the anxiety about whether to say \u201cI\u201d or \u201cme\u201d is so profound that people substitute \u201cmyself\u201d instead, which is almost guaranteed to be wrong (once again, \u201cwrong\u201d in this one very narrow, prescriptive sense). For some people (especially in HR) this becomes a linguistic tic which can quickly become irritating. \u201cWould you just sign the letter yourself, and then send it back to myself so that Jo and myself can review it and then myself will get back to yourself before yourself goes away on Thursday.\u201d Please find the time to punch yourself in the face, while you\u2019re at it, noticing as you do that because \u201cpunch yourself\u201d is <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">reflexive<\/span> (the puncher is both subject and object, doer and done-to) that \u201cyourself\u201d is appropriate here. You may also use \u201cmyself\u201d for emphasis as in \u201cI can punch you in the face <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">myself<\/span> if you prefer,\u201d but it is not a substitute for any and all personal pronouns.<\/p>\n<p>I think there\u2019s something else even deeper going on here. I think that a kind of neurotic politeness forces people away from both \u201cI\u201d and \u201cme\u201d pronouns; a need to avoid putting oneself in the line of fire, or the spotlight. \u201cMyself\u201d is somehow weaker than \u201cme\u201d and creates a barrier between my audience and the anxious core of my being. Here\u2019s another example of a similar habit.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s some English verb conjugating for you. English prefers to pile on extra words rather than fuck about with a lot of complicated verb endings to address things like case, tense, voice and so on, so these verb conjugations are pretty easy. Let\u2019s take the verb \u201cjump\u201d and the present simple tense.<\/p>\n<p><strong>First person singular: <\/strong>I jump<br \/>\n<strong>First person plural: <\/strong>We jump<br \/>\n<strong>Second person singular or plural: <\/strong>You jump<br \/>\n<strong>Third person singular:<\/strong> He\/she\/it jumps<br \/>\n<strong>Third person plural:<\/strong> They jump<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s missing from this list? English has an extra pronoun, sometimes omitted, and certainly with a rather archaic feel. Not \u201cye\u201d or \u201cthou\u201d, both of which are certainly outside modern English. Not the American \u201cy\u2019all\u201d which allows for a useful distinction between second person singular and second person plural, a distinction not found in standard English. No, it is the generic third person \u201cone\u201d, which today belongs primarily in the mouths of lazy comedians substituting it for any and all pronouns when impersonating members of the royal family. So what do we do, when we want to talk about \u201cpeople in general\u201d rather than any one person or group of people in particular? We co-opt the already over-stretched second person pronoun \u201cyou\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>And fair enough. \u201cWhat should one do when one encounters another person with grammatical habits one takes a personal dislike to?\u201d sounds unbearably pompous, stuffy and hifalutin. How much more relaxed, informal, natural and appropriate to use \u201cyou\u201d instead. But what I\u2019ve noticed is that the word \u201cyou\u201d often gets substituted for \u201cI\u201d or \u201cme\u201d instead. Take film reviews as an example. Here\u2019s a random example from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.totalfilm.com\/reviews\/cinema\/inception\/page:2\" target=\"_blank\">Total Film review of Inception<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At no point do you feel anything is here for effect, or that one constituent part doesn\u2019t interact seamlessly with those around it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Whose feelings are being described here? Not mine, I don\u2019t know this reviewer, I\u2019ve never met Neil Smith. He\u2019s in fact describing his own response, but imagines that his opinions are generally shared or \u2013 more likely \u2013 is on some level anxious about owning this opinion, so the third person generic \u201cyou\u201d is pressed into service. Here\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ukscreen.com\/filmreview\/0\/808\" target=\"_blank\">another example<\/a> \u2013 sticking with \u201cInception\u201d.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The denouement is a rather unsatisfying moment which leaves you wondering whether [POTENTIAL SPOILER REDACTED].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It might or might not leave me wondering. All we know for the moment is that it left <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">you<\/span> wondering, Jason Korsner. Other examples are easy to find. It\u2019s particularly noticeable when the interviewee is trying to make an experience which very few people have sound relatable and universal. Here\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/pages.prodigy.net\/sherylfan\/scpost\/maxim.html\" target=\"_blank\">an interview with Sheryl Crow<\/a> which I found from 1999.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You hear about male singers picking girls out of the audience and taking them backstage &#8211; but what would I do with a guy when I got him? I&#8217;ve got to get on the tour bus and drive all night. I think those days only really existed <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">when you were flying around and you could stay and party until four in the morning and then get into your private jet and fly to the next place<\/span>. God, if only it was that way now!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oddly, Sheryl, I don\u2019t share that experience.<\/p>\n<p>Having noticed this, I found it hard to avoid. I\u2019m now in the habit of mentally substituting \u201cI\u201d when I hear this awkward \u201cyou\u201d and, yes, it does sound a little more direct, but it also sounds a bit more honest and revealing, which is usually the point of giving an interview or writing a review. I may have spoiled interviews and reviews for you forever, but I\u2019m afraid from now on you\u2019ll have to put up with it. And if you\u2019re pissed off with myself, then that\u2019s something you and me are just going to have to deal with. But you know what that\u2019s like, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It take only a modest level of education to criticise other people for supposed infringements such as split infinitives, dangling participles or what have you, but none of this has anything to do with understanding how language works, which is a more complicated undertaking. If you prefer not to split infinitives, then that is primarily a reflection of your taste, and says little or nothing about how English grammar actually works or is used by its speakers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[105,104,106],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blah","tag-english","tag-grammar","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-5d","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}