WEeding Awards, vol. 1
Apr 27th, 2008 by Micah Tillman
[Official Version Published Here]
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WEeding Awards, vol. 1
[Awards Home] [Winners] [Records] [FAQ]
Announcement
I am instituting the WEeding Awards to highlight those texts which continue the unfortunate trend of misusing the first-person plural. It is my hope that these awards will inspire people to weed out such mistakes in their own thinking. (And I hope that handing out WEedings will keep me on my toes, lest I have to “honor” one of my own pieces in the process!)
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The first winner is a text by Michael Hirsh in Newsweek, entitled “How the South Won (This) Civil War.”
Reason for Nomination:
This article was nominated for a WEedy because of the following lines:
A:
“We must endure ‘lapel-pin politics’ that elevates the shallowest sort of faux jingoism over who’s got a better plan for Iraq and Afghanistan. We have re-imported creationism into our political dialogue (in the form of ‘intelligent design’).” -Michael Hirsh
B:
“We routinely demonize organizations like the United Nations that we desperately need and which are critical to missions like nation-building in Afghanistan.” -Michael Hirsh
Reason for Winning:
This text was awarded a WEedy because of the blatant shift from a possibly-legitimate use of “we” in A’s first sentence (i.e., it could be that “we” all are “enduring” the “politics” described) to the obvious misuse of “we” in A’s second sentence.
In loathing the “re-impor[ation of] creationism into our political dialogue,” Mr. Hirsh shows himself to not be party to said re-importation. But since Mr. Hirsh is not one of the re-importers, he cannot legitimately speak of them in the first person.
The same reasoning applies to B’s use of “we.” Through this line, Mr. Hirsh makes it evident that he deeply appreciates “organizations like the United Nations.” Therefore, Mr. Hirsh would not “demonize” any such organization, and cannot use the first person of those who do.
WEediness Quotient:
I count 2 sentences that contain WEeds (i.e., misuses of the first-person plural). I count 9 other sentences in which the first-person plural is used legitimately. Thus, the WEediness Quotient of “How the South Won (This) Civil War” is 2/9, or 0.222… .
Since this article is the first winner of a WEeding Award, it sets the record for number of WEedy sentences, and overall WEediness Quotient. Congratulations to “How the South Won (This) Civil War“!
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Call for Nominations:
Have you encountered any texts online (posts, articles, comments, speeches, websites, etc.) which need WEeding? I welcome nominations for future WEeding Awards, so keep your eye out while you’re surfing! Just use the Contact page, and send me the URL.
Thanks!
[Awards Home] [Winners] [Records] [FAQ]
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Ever since you first mentioned this I’ve been keeping an eye/ear out for it. Happens frequently…especially when someone is talking about how much humans/Americans suck (contributing to global warming, neglecting the poor, having food when kids are starving in Africa, etc).
Seems like it’s inclusive PC language…it frees the speaker/writer from sounding like a finger-pointer and also doesn’t leave anyone out so hopefully everyone feels guilty. Convenient!
Joanna, you are exactly right! I just became explicitly conscious of that fact today! It was in church this morning, I think. It’s one of those things that I think I knew, but just became aware that I knew. Or something.
Just replace “we” with “they” in any general critical remark, and you realize both what the person speaking really thinks, and how harsh it would sound if he/she actually said it. Using the first-person plural is both a way of being polite, and a way of being wimpy (while sounding noble).
The first-person plural allows people to criticize without seeming like they’re pointing fingers, or holier than thou.
And the guilt (as you point out)! The nobility of the suffering! The one thing that makes the We-sayer better than the They about whom he/she is using “We” is that he/she at least feels guilty about how terrible he/she is.
So even when a person says “We are [bad, selfish, lazy, etc.]” and means it of him- or herself, it turns into a penance which absolves the speaker. It ends up being a way of separating the speaker from the rest of the We; it turns the rest of the We into a They; the They remain guilty and unrepentant, while the speaker gets to feel a little better about him- or herself.
(C.S. Lewis said something about this phenomenon in one of his books, but I don’t remember which.)
Convenient indeed.