THE HEAD ELEMENT 3: PRONOUNS
Personal pronouns and reflexive pronouns
The personal pronouns I, we (1st person), you (2nd singular and plural), he, she, it and they (3rd person) derive their functions directly from their relation to the speaker in the speech event They are therefore a type of ‘pointing’ element or deictic in that some of their meaning is derived from the context. Others include the demonstrative and possessive pronouns and determiners.
I and you refer directly to the participants engaged in the discourse exchange. I is the current speaker and you the addressee(s). The 3rd person pronouns he, she, it and they refer to persons and things who are not, at the moment of speaking, addressees. They may be either physically present or completely outside the discourse event.
One is an impersonal singular pronoun which is sometimes used in formal styles to make general statements, often of (the speaker’s own) opinion, or simply to avoid using I, as in examples 1 and 2, quoting the actor Edward Fox in The Times.
The pronoun you, as in 3, can refer informally to people in general to describe a common kind of happening or experience. These are non-deictic (non-pointing) uses:
1 ‘One thinks about life a lot more as time goes by.’
2 ’My two years’ there [at RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] were an utter waste of time but I did meet one’s first wife and had one’s first child’.
3 It’s embarrassing when you can’t remember someone’s name.
I and we
Whereas I refers to the current speaker, we is not the plural of I, but rather I plus one or more other persons. The pronouns we/us either include or exclude the addressee:
inclusive we: Shall we sit together over there?
inclusive us: Let’s go! Let us pray. (formal)
exclusive we We wanted to ask you a favor.
exclusive us: Let us go!
Strong stress on we can disambiguate a potentially ambiguous reference. Otherwise, the addressee has to work out the meaning from the context:
A How are we going to get there? (ambiguous: speaker’s intended meaning
was probably inclusive)
B Well, WE’re going in Tom’s car. (exclusive)
We/us can refer to ‘everybody in general’:
We don’t seem to be near world peace yet.
The following letter, which appeared as a question in the Dear Doctor section of The Guardian, illustrates how context enables us to identify the referents of personal pronouns. For instance, who are the referents of the pronoun ‘I’, ‘he/she’ and ‘we’?
I live on the outskirts of London and have noticed a tame fox getting increasingly bold and coming near the house. Last week, he (she?) even stuck his nose into the kitchen and we spotted him playing on the kids’ swings and eating leftovers on the picnic table.
He, she and they as gender-neutral pronouns
Until fairly recently the pronouns he and his (in both pronominal and determiner function) were regularly used, not only to refer to a male referent, but also as a supposedly gender-neutral pronoun to include a female referent, as in 1 below. Such a discriminatory use in favor of males has become unacceptable to many speakers, particularly with reference to occupations, jobs and roles. One alternative, to use she as the unmarked form, has not caught on extensively, presumably because it discriminates in favor of females, as in 2, so it does not solve the problem, which is essentially the fact that English does not have a gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun.
In writing, the combination s/he is becoming common, but it is not transferable to the spoken language. The disjunctive he or she becomes cumbersome if repeated too often. A further alternative, the use of they with both singular and plural verb forms, is becoming more extensive as in 2:
1 Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body. [ASK]
2 . . . the non-distressed parent may choose to make explicit to the friend her own thinking, such as ‘well, the children do usually obey us and every parent gets wound up from time to time with their child.’ [ALN]
The pronoun it
The pronoun it, besides referring to specific objects and animals, can refer to a situation 1 or a fact 2. It is also used to refer to babies and infants, especially if the sex is undetermined by the speaker 3 or the reference is generic 4. In addition, it is often non- referring as in 5, its presence responding to the need, in English, for an overt syntactic subject (except in the imperative).
1 They were all shouting and fighting; it was terrible.
2 She was very scared, but she tried not to show it.
3 Olga’s baby is due in October. – Oh, is it a boy or a girl?
4 After the child is born, it needs constant care.
5 It won’t be easy to pass the driving test first time.
The pronouns he and she are often used to refer to animals, especially when they are in contact with humans. Otherwise they are referred to as it.
The reflexive pronouns
These pronouns – myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves –
have three functions: co-reference with the subject 1; an emphatic use, in which
the pronoun is either appositive to the subject or postponed 2; and where they are
required by the verb 3:
1 They learned to take care of themselves.
2 Susan herself told me so. Susan told me so herself.
3 She knows how to fend for herself. One should avail oneself of such opportunities.
Interrogative and indefinite pronouns
The interrogative pronouns – who, whose, which, what – are described and illustrated in their pronominal and determinative functions.
Rather different are the indefinite pronouns compounded from some, any, no and
every:
somebody, someone, something anybody, anyone, anything
everybody, everyone, everything nobody, no-one, nothing
These pronouns refer directly to an indefinite person or thing, or a broad class or persons or things, not to a referent already present in the discourse. In this respect they behave more like nouns than like pronouns, and are often post-modified, as in nothing new, someone like you.
