Usage: "Fold in your eggs with the flour"

[Maggie Ronkin]

Dear LingAnth People,

My TA is from Croatia, and is not a linguist but speaks four or five 
languages, including English, fluently.  He only has a slight accent in 
English and most people, if they detect anything, thinks he speaks a 
regional variety of American English with which they (hearers) just aren't 
familiar.   My TA's name is Nikola and he comes up with amazing usage 
questions.

Nikola's been asking if there's any sort of pragmatic function in the use of 
possessive pronouns (which are supposed to emphasize ownership and 
relationship) in utterances like "(You) fold in your eggs with the flour".  
In casual conversation, we seem to think these uses are associated with 
speaking (not writing; I found a government manual that advises on 
alternative uses of articles), and perhaps are more common in directives 
like our example than in other types of utterances.  In addition,  they may 
be viewed as"colloquial", "non-standard", "folksy", and "working class".  I 
thought they might be more common in women's speech than in men's--perhaps 
emphasizing relationships between speakers and hearers, rather than between 
recipients of directives and entities like eggs--but then I remembered that 
the person I know who uses the 'your x' form a lot is a heterosexual male 
(who has some pragmatic savvy as a seller of medical supplies).  We don't 
know if such pos pronouns + nouns are in non-North American Englishes and/or 
associated with something about North American culture (Nikola speculates 
individualism).

I've goggled to try to find literature on these uses, but haven't come up 
with anything.  Can anyone suggest literature or leads on English and even 
other languages that would help with the question(s)?

Thanks!
Maggie
maggie.ronkin at gmail.com

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