Think 'You' Is Rude? Explain 'Yourself'! A Story of Self-Acceptance and Cutting Myself Some Slack
This an attempt to ready myself for the upcoming season of Celebrity Traitors. Stomping up to bed, wine replacement magnesium drink in hand, furiously typing insults in majuscules under the sheets is off the cards this year. Neither my digits nor my sanity can take a late-night beating, especially during Sober October. I must prepare.
Brutal tactics aren’t an issue: having judgementally watched Survivor over my husband’s shoulder (while pretending to read because I’m obviously too sophisticated for reality TV) has adequately numbed me. Plus, my age and wokeness indicators mean that I’m outraged but rarely surprised by displays of unconscious bias at the round table. What I must prepare myself for is of a far pettier nature: a grammar blindside.
Last year, it was the only yourself that tipped me over the edge. I tried to enjoy the show without engaging in pettifoggery; there's more to life than grammar (so I’m told). I forced ‘me’, ‘myself’ and ‘I’ to leave the pedantry in my home office and poured a suitably gluggy, blood red glass of Beaujolais. It was a poor choice but I had my raisins ( – humour me!). I soon developed heightened empathy for the Gamay grape: at some point, we had both been stuck in a confined space, starved of oxygen, left to ferment, crushed, and had our delicate outer layer removed. I had been put through the human equivalent of carbonic maceration, and it was bloody painful.
Every time I heard 'I'm voting for yourself', my horrid little inner prescriptivist winced so much that she wished she had a beautiful, blunt fringe both thicker and longer than Winkleman's to cover any outward display of consternation (with a bonus aesthetic upgrade). Reluctant to be labelled a total curmudgeon, I sought reassurance from friends and family. Some were irked, but mostly by erroneous spellings; ‘yourself’ was largely a non-issue. I urged them to avoid the US iteration of The Traitors at all costs, as no one wants ‘Jeryldean’ as the catalyst of their undoing. Imagine the headstone.
I realised that something needed to give. As part of my 'self'-acceptance work, I delved into the wonderfully murky world of language change.
You and Me, We Used to Be Together
I hear 'yourself' and 'myself' used incorrectly all the time but is this just another example of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon i.e. do I have a heightened awareness of it because it is on my mind (all the time)? Google Search indicates that the non-standard phrases ‘How about yourself?’ and ‘What about yourself?’ are approximately ten times less popular than their grammatically standard counterparts containing 'you'.
However, according to Google Ngram Viewer, the use of ‘myself’ and ‘yourself’ has been steadily increasing since the early ‘90s. Many of the results are self-published self-help books. Make your own mind up about what that suggests. Interestingly, the prevalence of words with the prefix ‘self-’ such as ‘self-awareness’ and ‘self-validation' has been rising at a similar rate. Perhaps all this introspection and soul-searching is impacting grammar as well as vocabulary.
Another Google Ngram Viewer search piqued my curiosity. I found an inverse correlation between the frequency of use of ‘yourself included’ and ‘you included’ since the turn of the millennium. ‘Yourself’ is on the rise, and ‘you’ is on the decline. Sweaty-palm flashbacks of awkward, grammatically-questionable interactions in hotels and workplaces aside, that’s all the data I have.
Who or What Can We Blame?
1. No one: Language changes in response to human needs. It is a reasonable assumption that 'you’ is simply no longer fully fit for purpose. Latin and French both had their way with English grammar and left it in a right old state! Some grammarians like to peddle the idea that pronouns are uncomplicated. I disagree, and this is also why every single person on the planet should be able to choose and use their own pronouns as they wish, share them without prejudice, and change them if want, just as we should all be able to do with titles and names.
2. Britishness: Disappointed with my data findings, I redoubled my efforts and resorted to some shallow digging in carefully selected, esoteric corners of the internet. Success! Many grammarians support the notion that ‘you’ is commonly perceived as too direct, stark and abrasive for many confrontation-averse Brits and their indirect communication style. ‘Yourself and Joanna can work on the improvement plan’ apparently sounds softer than ‘you and Joanna’, despite the former being non-standard.
3. Pedants: It would be delightfully ironic if language snobs and prescriptivists were to blame for the rise of non-standard grammar. What appears to be a ‘mistake’, might be an intuitive act of rebellion against years of corporal punishment and rote learning. Alternatively, hypercorrection could be at play. If Gareth invites you to ‘join Mollie and I’, he’s probably inadvertently overcompensating because he thinks ‘and me’ is wrong. If the invitation is to join ‘Mollie and myself’, perhaps he’s a no-nonsense sort of guy and is shrewdly avoiding the ‘me or I’ conundrum altogether.
4. Capitalism? Hear me out. Alas, it has permeated every element of life, including language. Generally, language has become more transactional. I was told to ‘sell myself’ better during my short stint on dating apps while I was ‘on the market’, presumably because my ‘personal branding’ was off! Vomit. Meanwhile, business language is becoming more humanised. We no longer ‘buy products’ or ‘target an audience’, we ‘support businesses’ and ‘grow a community’. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s insanely strategic.
The current capitalist agenda relies on promoting pseudo-individualism and personal agency to trick us into feeling good about being trapped in consumerist cycles. This is shaping how we speak. The persuasive ‘yourself’, part of so-called ‘Apprentice speak’ and reinforced in many corporate environments, demonstrates capitalist society’s power over language. Certain customer service and sales training manuals are replete with peculiar language tips that extend beyond the patronising overuse of forenames and obscene levels of eye contact. (‘Yes, David, you know, David, it’s true. Let’s have another look now, David’). If it’s true that flattery and overly polite language are used to manipulate and disarm others to ensure complicity, it might explain why I had to eschew Depop for my own sanity. The ‘no rush hun x’ and ‘take ur time bbz’ DMs pressuring me into discounting items were too much. Now I just have to wean myself off the Vinted.
**Are 'Myself' and 'Yourself' Official? **
The Cambridge Dictionary states that we 'sometimes use reflexive pronouns instead of personal pronouns for politeness [...]: The National Trust is a charity depending on the support of people like yourself.' The Oxford Learner's Dictionary acknowledges 'yourself' as a polite or formal alternative to 'you', with the caveat that 'some people do not consider this use to be correct'.
But dictionaries are largely irrelevant (and so are rules – look, I just started this paragraph with the conjunction ‘but’. Sue me). While the OED plays a role in recognising and documenting words and claims to be 'widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language', it has no official status or prescriptive authority whatsoever.
English is a progressive, unfettered, ever-changing language that continues to exist without a formal regulator. And rightly so. It is not a government's or institution's prerogative to decide how people should speak. Language is arguably the most democratic element of the United Kingdom at present; it is made by the people, for the people, about the people.
Cutting ‘Yourself’ Some Slack
The umbrage I’d taken to the polite ‘yourself’ was excessive but I do not believe that 'you' is rude. Poetry and journals notwithstanding, I'll be mostly sticking to commonly accepted grammar conventions in my work but, in the name of free speech, I might just send a few 'How's yourself?' messages after a glass of kombucha on Friday.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic and I'll leave you with this conundrum:
If 'yourself' was used to ensure politeness and minimise upset to fellow contestants, then what was the thought process behind all the misspelt forenames?
Keep being pedantic, Luv Shovon [sic]