April 05, 2007
Grammar Rant II : This Time It's Personal (Pronouns)
I’ve discovered that there is something that bothers me more than misplaced apostrophes and even more than misuse of the locution ‘begs the question’.
What is this heinous crime against sense and grammar of which I speak? None other than the prevalent and ever increasing abuse of reflexive pronouns.
Offenses against the apostrophe can be understood, and sometimes even forgiven, as the rules for its use can be a little complicated. Anyone with a fifth grade education should, of course, be able to correctly deploy their punctuation marks but, as we all know, what should be the case very rarely is the case.
But this aggression against reflexive pronouns will not stand.
For some reason, people seem to have got it into their heads that reflexive pronouns sound more ‘formal’ and start throwing them around willy nilly when they’re trying to sound ‘proper’.
So we get locutions like:
‘Many people, myself included, have no idea about grammar.’
‘John and myself went camping on the weekend.’
‘If you have any questions, ask myself or Fred.’
‘Should I get anything for yourself or Sue?.
The use of ‘myself’ or ‘yourself’ in each case above is incorrect and sounds stupid. It doesn’t make you sound ‘correct’ or ‘formal’ or clever. It makes you sound like an idiot. Stop it. Seriously.
Instead, try using the correct damn pronouns - they’re there for a reason people:
‘Many people, me included, have no idea about grammar’.
‘John and I went camping on the weekend’.
‘If you have any questions, ask me or Fred’.
‘Should I get anything for you or Sue?.
The rules for using reflexive pronouns - myself, yourself, himself, herself, oneself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves, itself - are not difficult. Not even remotely. They’re used always and ONLY when the subject is also the direct or indirect object. Loosely speaking, this means when the person acting is also the thing acted on (when the agentivity is reflexive).
In other words, only use ‘myself’ if you’re doing something to yourself.
For instance, I can hurt myself, correct myself, improve myself, or make a fool of myself. Likewise, you can entertain yourself, educate yourself, convince yourself, give yourself to someone, or give yourself an early mark (indirect object).
It’s not rocket surgery.
Difficulty seems to arise most often in coordinating pronominal phrases. Don’t use a reflexive pronoun just because you’re referring to two people. If you’re unsure, think about which pronoun you’d use if you were referring to only the pronominal referent.
You wouldn’t say ‘Myself went to the beach yesterday’, so don’t say ‘Sue and myself went to the beach yesterday’.
Similarly you wouldn’t say ‘Ben gave I a lovely present’, so don’t say ‘Ben gave Sue and I a lovely present’.
When you use the incorrect pronominal case in trying to sound ‘proper’, you just make yourself sound like a moron.
Here endeth the rant.
These are indeed heinous crimes.
I have just this week discovered a new atrocity that raises the hairs on my neck: the use of the word ‘poorly’ as an adjective.
‘Oh, he’s had a poorly tummy.’
Poorly what? Poorly nourished? Poorly ventilated? Poorly exposed? Nor is it just toothless folk with only a primary education who bandy this adverb about. Surgeons, who have presumably had more than a decade of tertiary study, will ask ‘How long has he been poorly?’ It astounds me that adults will mimic this apalling grammar. It’s not as though they would reply ‘Yeah but no but yeah but no’ just because their patient said it!
This seems to be a particularly British phrase, since I never encountered it at home. So I’m having to employ a fierce internal censor. If I start saying it myself, there’ll be trouble.
Are you sure that ‘Ben gave Sue and I a lovely present’ is incorrect. I haven’t studied grammer but it seems that highschool teachers (who probably haven’t studied grammer either) hammer it into their students that ‘Sue and me’ or ‘me and Sue’ should be replaced with ‘Sue and I.’ I took it to mean that ‘me’ should only be used when referring only to oneself.
Oh dear. You probably got hammered to say ‘Sue and I’ because you tried to say ‘Sue and me went to the shop’. That doesn’t mean you should say ‘Ben gave Sue and I a present’.
Sue and I went to the shop - here ‘Sue and I’ is the subject, as would ‘we’ be in the above if substituted.
He bought a present for Sue and me - ‘Sue and me’ is the object, as would ‘us’ be.
You wouldn’t say ‘he bought a present for we.’ Nor would you say ‘us went to the shops.’ Subjects and objects are different parts of grammar, but in English we sometimes use the same words for them
Subjects: I, you, he, she, it, we, they Objects: me, you, him, her, us, them
This is probably clear as mud, but writing it is convincing me that more grammar needs to be taught if we aren’t all going to sound like idiots. (I’m sure you’re not an idiot)
‘Are you sure that ‘Ben gave Sue and I a lovely present’ is incorrect.’
Absolutely.
‘I took it to mean that ‘me’ should only be used when referring only to oneself.’
If high school teachers are giving that impression, they’re doing students a disservice.
The determination of which personal pronoun to use has nothing to do with whether or not the pronominal phrase is coordinated with another noun phrase.
The pronoun ‘I’ is the nominative case of the first person pronoun. It is used when the referent is the grammatical subject.
e.g. I went to the beach. Sue and I went to the beach.
The pronoun ‘me’ is the accusative case of the first person pronoun. It is used when the referent is the grammatical object (or indirect object).
e.g. Ben gave me a present. Ben gave Sue and me a present.
Saying ‘Ben gave Sue and I a present’ is a common form of hypercorrection.
It’s about time grammar was taught in schools again. There was, for a time, an ill conceived reaction against teaching students the grammar of their language, however, knowledge of syntax aids understanding of otherwise arbitrary seeming syntactic and morphological principles (which are actually rule governed) and is a significant aid in acquiring further languages.
For those who enjoy reading about matters linguistic, I recommend a regular dose of Language Log.
Matt, your reply has more of the lingo than mine! In my defence, I wrote it the day after coming off night shift, and after a few glasses of wine.
Thanks for the language log link…looks juicy!
Oh I’m so glad this business of reflexive pronouns irritates someone else as much as it does me! When call centre morons ask me to “please ring myself if there are problems” I am sorely tempted to tell tham what to do with themselves!
I haven’t recently come across this particular solecism, though I have as infuriated as you by “question-begging” misuse.
Crappy English is, in my experience, now unfortunately being mandated by at least one Australian University (UQ). Some recent comments on my recent uni assignments:
- “use less psychological jargon!” (in response to the word “vitiate”)
- “cavil” crossed out (the tutor had never heard of it)
- “don’t use rhetorical questions” (in response to my starting a paragraph with a question that the same para was designed to answer).
Is it just UQ, or is it no longer a requirement of being a university tutor to have a basic command of the language?
(delte — you’re wrong on “poorly”. It’s a piece of (Northern?) British English dialect, in which ‘poorly’ is indeed an adjective.)