Who do I think I am?

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, linguistics, pronouns, popular culture

Toddlers are addressed by everyone as "you" so frequently that they think their name is "You," and upon hearing others using "I" for themselves, the little ones think that "I" and "Me" refer exclusively to those others. Pronouns take a while to get used to. This kind of confusion underlies a bit of wordplay in a Looney Tunes cartoon in which Elmer Fudd is pursuing Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. As John McWhorter tells us in the Introduction to his new book, his title is found in this exchange:

BUGS (to Elmer): Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home?

DAFFY: Shoot him now, shoot him now.

BUGS: You keep out of this; he doesn't have to shoot you now.

DAFFY: Ha! Hold it right there! Pronoun trouble! It's not, "He doesn't have to shoot 'you' now," it's "He doesn't have to shoot 'me' now." Well, I say he does have to shoot me now! So shoot me now!

(BLAM!) [This being a cartoon, Daffy is now covered in soot]

The title of the book is Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words.

While the author points out the confusion of Daffy in mixing up "me" and "you", the reply of Bugs to Daffy in the third line shows that Bugs isn't so clear himself. The wordplay is reminiscent of the "Who's on First?" routines of the 1930's made famous by Abbott and Costello in the 1940's and later.

As the thread of the book winds along, we find that pronouns have been alternately steadfast and malleable. Each chapter traces the usage of a pronoun or a set of subject-object pronouns (such as "I" and "me" or "he" and "him"). A particularly long section traces the history of "me" as it switched between object-only, subject-only, and a little bit of both. For example, while I was taught that the "correct" way to refer to myself plus a friend doing something is, "Jerry and I went to a movie," for a century or so this has stood alongside "Me and Jerry went…" and almost as frequently, "Jerry and me went…"

Here are the rules I was taught, to which I habitually adhere, going on 70 years:

• When listing a group that includes you, out of modesty refer to yourself last.
• If the group is the subject of the sentence, refer to yourself as "I", as in "I went": "Jerry and I went."
• If the group is the object, refer to yourself as "me", as in "It made me happy": "It made Jerry and me happy."

Period. Those who used alternative constructions were considered ignorant or uneducated and, in a school setting, were firmly corrected. Again and again if necessary.

I admit to a bit of discomfort with accepting Dr. McWhorter's contention that "Me and Jerry went" is permissible due to historical English usage, and even the more, numerous languages that either have dual-use pronouns or don't have object-subject distinctions anyway. I don't really care what is acceptable in Tagalog or !Kung. I want to be clearly understood by Anglophones.

By the end of that first chapter I had a side thought, "I wonder if his goal is to support the singularizing of 'they'?" A quick look at the Table of Contents confirmed my suspicion: the last chapter's title is "They Was Plural." However, I didn't let that slow me down. I enjoyed the book, the linguistic histories and odd collections of pronouns that surround and underlie the ones with which we English speakers fill our prose. I didn't know before that in Old English, the male, female, and neuter third-person singular pronouns were "he", "heo", and "hit". "He" has stuck with us, while over time "hit" was de-aspirated to "it", but the path from "heo" to "she" (with a side jaunt to spit out "her") was more circuitous.

By the way, this puts paid to the contention that pronouns are so pervasive that making changes is arduous-to-impossible. All to support the tiny smattering of folks who don't like being either "he" or "she", and of course it is barbarous to call them "it", so of course "they" is called in to fill the gap. Behind all that is the delusion that "nonbinary" is a valid gender. In actuality, there is tremendous political force behind the delusion, for totalitarian reasons I'll defer for the nonce, such that a change has already been made, and is being forced on an unwilling public. For my part, if someone points to a individual person and says something like, "They are with me," I'm likely to respond, "Is there a mouse in his (or her) pocket?"—depending on the visible appearance of the person. And to close the loop, I have yet to hear someone say, "They is with me." I wonder if the "they" standing by even notices the gaffe.

Furthermore, there are numerous instances of "they" as a nonspecific singular pronoun, such as, "When a newcomer arrives, they need to be greeted by an usher." However, these have arisen over the past 50-60 years primarily by folks who bend over backwards to cater to old-line feminism and its crusade to change "chairman" and "chairwoman" to "chair" or "chairperson", etc. Until I was in my twenties, the acceptable usage was, "When a newcomer arrives, he needs to be greeted by an usher," unless the newcomer is expected to be female, such as at a League of Women Voters event; then, "…she needs…" is preferred.

I would say it is a little early to take up the cudgels for settling on "they" where "it" will work. To the contention that "it" refers to inanimate things, just ask anyone with a pet, where "it" is frequently used to refer to one's furbaby, except by those who over-humanize their pets. So if a man or woman doesn't want to be referred to either by "he" or "she", I'd prefer to say "it". Of course, speaking to such a person, I'll use "you." Just like I would to any other human. Or even a pet.

Not to leave too sour a taste in your mouth, dear reader, I must say that Dr. McWhorter writes very well, the book is quite valuable, and if it proves to be a trend-setter, perhaps I'll have to bend to what then becomes truly common usage. I come from a long-lived family, so I say, time will tell. Who knows what another decade or two will bring.