Tag Archives: Pronouns

A Matter of Grammar

A Matter of Grammar – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

This week, after going down the rabbit hole of the Chicago Manual of Style's monthly Q&A newsletter, I thought I'd talk a bit about grammar. — Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane
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This week, after going down the rabbit hole of the Chicago Manual of Style‘s monthly Q&A newsletter, I thought I’d talk a bit about grammar.

One of my favorite newsletters to read is the Chicago Manual of Style‘s monthly Q&A email which tries to answer some pressing questions regarding the English language in this particularly formal academic setting that I often write in professionally. We historians in the United States use the Chicago Manual of Style as our main style guide, both for its system of extensive footnotes and for its grammatical rules. I am familiar and have used several other systems, including the AP Style Guide, and the MLA, APA, and Harvard citation systems, yet my preference remains Chicago for its clarity. Chicago is the preferred style guide for us historians as well as the basis of the style used by the American Anthropological Association.

English is an unusual language in that we don’t have a single central authoritative language academy as does French, Spanish, Irish, and German. Our best bet is to see what our two major dictionaries say: the Oxford English Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. The former is the standard in the United Kingdom and throughout the Commonwealth, while the latter is the American standard developed first during the Early Republic when its initial author Noah Webster sought to better differentiate American English from its imperial counterpart, the better to craft a specifically republican national language fit for our young Union. I’ve had my problems with Webster’s dictionary for a while now in part because I don’t see the point of most of his spelling reforms, and for a good part of my teens and twenties I used British spellings over American ones. Today though, I’ve reverted to the American standards in what might well be a sign of my general weariness of the constant fight over so many different topics and issues; this was one that fell by the wayside.

This month then, the Chicago Manual‘s Q&A included a question about whether it was fine for an academic writer to write in the first or second person, to use the pronouns I and you. We are taught to always restrict our writing to the third person, to avoid the subjectivity that is implicit in the first person. I’ve begrudgingly accepted this, to the extent that amid the 96,276 words that comprise the ninth draft of my dissertation only three of those are the pronoun I. All three instances where I drift into the first person are in the footnotes where it is necessary to explain my decisions regarding certain translations or connections that would otherwise not be possible in the English language. By contrast, I use this pronoun a great deal here in the Wednesday Blog, where I am writing to you, dear reader, in a more personal manner that I hope is evident in this text. Of the 189,993 words that I’ve written for the Wednesday Blog before this week, 3,360 of those are the pronoun I.

The response in the Q&A about using the pronoun I spoke to that concern for subjectivity, yet also spoke of a need that our academic writing ought to be “more lively and personal.” I see both sides of this, more and more books written by my fellow academics do include more of the first person in them, yet at the same time Kate Turabian’s writer’s manual––an abridged version of the Chicago Manual––suggests that writers “avoid beginning your sentences with I believe or I think (which go without saying).” I am often frustrated to hear people use fillers like these, or like “it goes without saying,” or “to be honest,” when those are things I hope they would be adhering to in the first place. On the other hand, I’ve heard papers at conferences where the author reads out “this author finds that _____,” which sounds ludicrous. Two weeks ago, at the Renaissance Society of America’s conference I did make it clear where I was presenting my own theories based on the evidence that my primary sources provided. A spoken context is different than a written one, not only can there be more repetition of material to bring a point home, one can also use more personal elements, bring oneself into the topic and show the audience why they ought to care about it the way you do.

Academic writing is quite formal, and it follows set patterns and standards. It is in many ways an intricate dance, whether a waltz or an older minuet, which we follow in order to write to one another in the same methods and manners that we will all recognize. One may want to deconstruct some of these Elements of Style, to borrow a title, yet those standards exist to facilitate communication. Language proscription has its place along with all the innovations that happen each and every day in speech and writing. I might use this pronoun more in my academic writing in the future, especially if I choose to write a prologue which tells my reader why I am fascinated by a topic that will invite them to consider it as well.

I would like it if there were an English Language Academy in the same vein as the Académie Française, yet I would prefer to have a say in its decisions. Is that bold of me, sure. Yet that academy’s function is best served by the continued writing and publication of those of us who use the English language to express our thoughts on a daily basis. For every article or book I submit for publication about the history of animals in the Renaissance there will be countless other works published in all manner of settings which demonstrate the versatility of this language and its uses. We academics have just as much a claim to it as anyone else, and my own English is not everyone’s English. Still, we have our common grammar that keeps this language together, and that is something worthwhile.

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Corrections

3 April 2024: Soon after publication, I corrected this week’s blog post for grammar, naturally.

On Perspective

On Perspective – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane

Some words about how changing perspective changes what one sees. Click here to support the Wednesday Blog: https://www.patreon.com/sthosdkane
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A part of being a historian is learning how to reach into the sources and find the perspectives of the people you’re researching. In my case that’s a French explorer and writer named André Thevet (1516–1590), who longtime readers and listeners to this publication will now be familiar with. The best way to learn about Thevet’s perspective is to read his books, and in my case to translate them as well. It’s a humbling experience to get to know this man, or at least to get to know the public persona he crafted in his published works over a 45 year career.

These are lessons I’ve found important to carry over into my daily life. I’m more hesitant to get angry at someone who cuts me off driving, or to get annoyed at the crying baby in a café or restaurant because I don’t know what’s bothering the baby or how their parents’ day might be going. I do remember my own phase in life when my initial reaction to most things was to cry, as an adult I figure that’s because I was scared of the unknown, scared of being away from familiar places, people, and things. I hope I remember that when the day comes that I’m lucky enough to be a parent, should that day come indeed.

I’ve learned to adapt my speech to fit the people I’m talking to, using the official wording of a company or that someone in a professional capacity used to make sure we’re talking on the same wavelength. One instance of this that annoyed me to no end was at my local Panera, since closed, where the staff had a different way of referring to sizes of soups and mac & cheese than what was on the menu. Whereas it was written above their heads that portions were served as half or whole they instead would only refer to them as small or large, and often wouldn’t seem to understand what I wanted when I used the printed terminology from Panera. I learned after a few awkward encounters, though admittedly Panera’s mac & cheese has always been hit or miss, somedays it’s delicious with a creamy hot melted cheese, other times the cheese is clumpy and more a lukewarm solid than a liquid.

For a while I’ve been thinking about the contemporary efforts underway to find a gender neutral 3rd person pronoun to use in English. The choice of they makes a great deal of sense considering the history of this language. For each person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd) we have two pronouns, singular and plural, except of course for the 2nd person which is you all around. For the 3rd person options we have it and they, and while they is a clunky solution to the conundrum of gender neutrality in language, they is still a better fit than it. It bears an air of inhumanity; it’s what we use to refer to things that are less-than human: animals, plants, and inanimate objects. The division between something referred to as it rather than he, she, or they is murky. I often became quite annoyed with people who referred to my dog Noel as it rather than she, after all she had a gregarious personality. She expressed emotions, love, joy, happiness, fear, sadness, boredom. It was clear to me having lived with her for over a decade that she knew how to think for herself, how to make her desires known to those of us who could understand her. It reflects English’s Germanic roots more than anything else. I tend to think of the English it in the context of its closest German cognate, the pronoun es, as well as in the German distinction between the action of humans eating essen and the action of animals eating fressen. 

We’ve preserved this distinction in our language because we find it useful to define boundaries between different types of subjects and objects. This distinction demonstrates our priorities toward one set from another, toward the human over what older schools of natural history referred to as lesser forms of life. I for one find that to be an outdated way of thinking for it ignores what we have to learn from the great kaleidoscope of life in all its radiance and color. I became a better person because of the years I spent living with Noel, playing with her, taking her for walks, comforting her when she needed it, and letting her comfort me when I was feeling down.

If we have one great flaw as humans, it’s our hubris. We let ourselves believe that we know all there is out there to know, that we have gotten to a point in our evolution as a species where we’ve developed tools that can make sense of anything and everything the Universe can throw at us. Life has proven to me that that kind of thinking is flawed on so many levels. We know a lot more about what’s out there around us now than we did in the past, but the most wonderous part of being alive is knowing that we don’t know everything yet! I love that fact for how simple it is, and because it means there’s more for us to explore, that there’s still a horizon to look over.

I think that’s why I’m drawn to people like Thevet, like Noel. I like explorers because in my own way I’m an explorer too. I may not always take off for far distant countries or alien worlds, but I do get out of bed every morning not knowing what the day ahead is going to bring. And no matter if it’s a good day or a bad one, I know eventually it’ll make a good story, and that I’ll learn from it so I can wake up the next day better prepared for life.

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