prescriptivism, conventions, &c.

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Friday, February 2, 2001 4:56 pm -0500 Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM wrote:

> A. Murie (sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>) writes:
>
>>>>>>
>      [...] Another hypercorrection  of the reverse kind that I not only
> hear but see in print increasingly is: "So-&-so and I"  instead of
> "So-&-s0 and me"  as objects of verbs or  prepositions. "She spoke to Bob
> and I"...."He invited Mary and I."  The "and" seems to kick in a reflexive
> *don't-use-/me/*  that I attribute to ill-understood corrections  from
> teachers.
> <<<<<
>
> More specifically, "don't use 'X and me'", which applies to the subject
> function but is overgeneralized, I suspect by people who don't understand
> subject vs. object (and maybe thanks to teachers who don't teach the
> concept effectively).

But then there's also the 'politeness factor'.  My mother, a retired
primary teacher, judges people quickly on their manners.  When my brothers
and I were small, she hammered into us that we shouldn't say 'me and Billy"
because it's rude to put yourself first.  So we'd say "Me and Kim are going
to Woolworth's" and she'd say "Kim and I!!!"  I'm sure she did the same
thing to hundreds of first-graders over the years.  Anyhow, she can't get
over that my college-educated sister-in-law (who went to my mother's own
alma mater) says "me and Billy" (Billy being the brother she married).  In
a fit of guilt over being so hung up about this one thing that bothers her
about an otherwise adored daughter-in-law, she asked her editrix daughter
if she herself did anything that would be considered 'incorrect' language,
and I pointed out that she always says "between you and I."  She
immediately figured out why that was wrong, but said that she's always been
so conscious of 'x and I' as the polite form that she never considered the
case of the pronouns.

Lynne

M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320