Who’s ‘She’, The Cat’s Mother?
It’s a funny thing to note in a culture that’s generally as warm and fuzzy as the one I currently live in, but I’m always thrown by the heavy use of pronouns in conversational contexts where I’m not used to them. Americans make much use of the words ‘he’ and ’she’ of people in the same room, and even in the same conversation, where I instinctively feel that the British reaction would be to use the person’s name.
For example, this morning someone trying to ask me for something (a document in this case) which he’d forgotten the title of, said “I mean that thing that she did” indicating the person sitting to my left. My reflexive feeling when I heard the words was that the ’she’ made it sound a bit aggressive. And that’s what always goes through my mind, which is why I think I’m just conditioned to hearing people use names in statements of that kind.
I said ‘always’ just then because this isn’t a one-off. I’d judge I have that reaction at least once every couple of days. I also get it in other cities in the US so I don’t think it’s an exclusively San Franciscan thing.
There are a number of linguistic quirks that I’m aware I need to be wary of adopting; I’m finding it worryingly easy to say ‘line’ when I mean ‘queue’ for instance, but I’m fairly secure in my belief that I’ll only ever use ’sidewalk’ ironically.
But I think if I ever lose that little mental shudder over ‘he’ and ’she’, I’ll know I’m on the slippery slope. And if I ever actually end up hearing myself do it, drastic measures will be called for.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Hey,
Happy New Year!
I wanted to respond to your observations here for two reasons. Firstly, I don’t think this is a SF thing, rather a US thing, as my partner is American and even though he lives in Britain now (perhaps especially so) we often exchange words over the use of ’s/he’ when talking about someone who is within earshot. The impersonal nature of such referrals grates so much to a British ear. Secondly, having spent some time in the US, I’ve been thinking about the American forms of speech I find myself using (even back here in Britain). I have come to the conclusion, perhaps wrongly, that it is the convenience of single syllables, for example, trash v rubbish - it’s quicker to say ‘trash’, hood v bonnet, etc. However, perhaps this is too simplistic as I also find myself saying ‘trunk’ rather than ‘boot’ - no advantage there. Duh! However, sidewalk is one I don’t think I will ever adopt - wonder why? The psycholinguistics are fascinating. chris