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I IS YOU

Tim S. wrote:

Have you noticed the spread of the usage that I think of as the "inclusional you"? I think the usage probably started out as part of a common construction to personalize an instruction, but it has morphed into a usage aimed at universalizing the description of an experience by replacing first-person linguistic forms with second-person forms.

If I'm right, the usage started out in the context of attempts to personalize instructions by injecting the reader into the action, as in this example from learnaboutgolf.com: "First, you grip the club low on the shaft, as far down as the bottom of the leather if this is comfortable."

Then, somewhere along the line, the usage got picked up as a way to personalize descriptions of activities or experiences, as in "When you arrive in the lobby, you see two flights of stairs, one granite, leading to the atrium, and the other dark marble, leading to the restaurant" or "When you enter the pit area, the noise from the engines is so intense that it almost peels your skin off."

In such constructions, the second person usage is natural. But increasingly, I'm hearing the second person being used in analogous constructions as a substitute for the first person by people who have witnessed something extraordinary and who want to describe it in a way that will draw other people in to the experience. I found the following example in a story about the "poverty elite," for example (people who are paid peanuts to do menial tasks in glamorous surroundings):

When Miramax throws a premiere party, low-level staff are always there ~ to help. "You're invited," says an employee, "but you're standing there with headsets on, going, 'Sharon Stone is approaching! Sharon Stone is approaching!'"

The usage is also common in sports reporting, as in the following report on the action by Donovan McNabb:

On a first-and-10 from the Bucs' 10, McNabb's pass intended for Antonio Freeman was intercepted by Barber, who returned it 92 yards for the clinching touchdown. That suddenly, the Eagles' season was over. "It's like you don't believe it's happening but, obviously, it is," McNabb said.

The usage always seems to be cast in the present tense, even though in the nature of things it's always a report about something that has already happened. "You're standing there, and this guy walks up and sticks a gun in the cashier's face. You just say, 'This is so not happening!'" Maybe that's a necessary aspect of the attempt to draw the audience in to the action: you can't be drawn in to something that has already happened; it has to be something that's happening now.

It's one thing to encounter the usage in the description of a widely shared or potentially universal experience like attending a party or seeing your pass intercepted or, God forbid, being present during an armed robbery, but increasingly I'm encountering it in reports on experiences that are absolutely one-off, like a recent report on the ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings about the unconditional surrender of Germany marking the end of World War II in Europe. It included a brief interview with the military equivalent of a poverty elite, a G.I. who happened to be in the room when the surrender documents were formally signed. He said something like, "It's incredible. You're watching the generals sign these papers and you know you're watching history being made."

There's something a little strange and self-effacing about the extraction of the "I" from first-person reports, especially in the case of unique and unduplicatable experiences. Maybe it's the expression of a basic American egalitarian impulse or a deep-seated need for communal experience in an increasingly balkanized culture or a flip-side echo of attempts to evade responsibility for anything and everything by abandoning all pronouns and disappearing into the fog of the passive voice (as in "Mistakes were made").

...it's been bugging me for a few years now, all these people on the local news telling me about freak kiln explosions and accidental pet strangulations and UFO landings and whatnot, all incapable of using the first-person pronoun, all reflexively plucking their I's out. I wish now that I had been saving examples. But I think it may be the sort of thing that you will start hearing everywhere once you are attuned to it.

I plan to, Tim.

The more formal way to report on something with a bit of distance is to use "one" rather than "I" or "you": "One is puzzled by this construction." "You" is more familiar and would be what an instructor would say in person. Descriptions need not insert "you"; you, or one, or I, could write or say, for instance, "In the lobby, one flight of stairs leads to..." etc., but in conversation that construction may take a little more conscious effort than the more conversational "In the lobby you see..." Perhaps the G.I. was too humble to believe or say he had been present when history was being made, although excessive excitement over (1) Sharon Stone and (2) a touchdown is more foolish than humble; it's attaching way too much important to these events.

I hadn't paid much attention to this usage before Tim brought it up. It is indeed much like the ubiquitous use of the present tense to describe events in the past. This practice probably is intended to create a "You Are There!" experience, but actually attempts to make discrete and finite experiences into something universal and timeless, giving them more weight than they can usually bear.

But maybe the Beatles had it down: "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."

ON CHICKENS

From Bill R.:

WRT chickens, the question came up at work this week as to whether chickens could be mangy. Although strictly speaking they cannot (mange is defined as a disease of mammals), there are chicken diseases that are analogous.

FYI, Aussie for chicken is "chook." Much better than the standard Australianisms that tack on "ee" as a suffix ~ prezzies for Chrissie, throw a shrimp on the barbie, and the like.

I heard that!

# "I can't believe they can hang their heads high..." The speaker meant he couldn't believe that they could hold their heads up, while he thought they should be hanging their heads down. Or maybe he wanted to hang them, period.

# A craft show demonstrated how to make designer gift bags. What does this mean? Bags that are designed? What isn't? Knock-offs of famous designer bags? I don't think so. Bags that are cute or fancy? Maybe, but that's not what "designer" really means.

# News readers pronounced Newark (New Jersey) as New-Ark; and "analysts" as a-nalysts (that is, long a in the first syllable, as in "anal"), which in fact probably renders the meaning more trenchantly that the correct pronunciation.

# "Number of incidences": Although "incidence" may be defined as an occurrence (or incident), it is more often used to mean the rate or ratio of occurrence, and it's best used that way in order to distinguish it in meaning from "incident". Thus we have more words with specific meanings, and language is more precise.

Did you know?

# In Venezuela they say "Principe Azul" (the Blue Prince) to mean Prince Charming or the White Knight.

# "Camelopard" is an old (Middle English from Middle Latin from Greek) word for giraffe? Because the giraffe's head is shaped like a camel's, and it is spotted like a leopard. "Giraffe" has a different source: French girafe, from Italian giraffa, from Arabic dialectal zirfa, probably of African origin. Don't know why we ended up with giraffe and not camelopard.

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