MORE LANGUAGE GEEKERY

Today, we're discussing PRONOUNS. I'm not going to get into the politics of gender-neutral pronouns; it's late-ish, and I still have to do some reading and wash some underpants. I don't have time to do that topic justice, is what I'm saying.

The pronouns I'm talking about is the pronouns of Second-Person Pronouns in the Renaissance (Shakespeare's time) - specifically, "thee" and "you." Both were used, but in different contexts.

"Thee" was the more derogatory of the two. It was used from superiors to inferiors, as well as when you were insulting someone. That's why Shakespearean insults are so frequently seen as "thou vile wretch" or something like that - the speaker is implying, through pronouns, that the listener is inferior in status to the speaker. Interestingly, "thou" was also used intimately.

"You" is the more polite term. It's used from an inferior to a superior, or a child to a parent. Sometimes nobles would use it in derision to their inferiors to mock and embarrass them. If someone doesn't know someone else's status, they would normally address their partner as "you" until they could get a better gauge of it.

How was this used?

Well, firstly, it's really cool to tell character shifts. In Desdemona's final scene of Othello, she and Othello address each other as "you" for the first portion of the interaction. Othello's decision to actually kill Desdemona can be cited to the line where he starts calling her "thee" and not "you" - an interesting point of derision, yes? Even though Desdemona and Othello are supposed to be life partners and all, I think Shakespeare has them address each other as "you" - and has Desdemona continue to address Othello as such - to highlight two things. Firstly, the pronouns point out that there's something definitely wrong in their relationship - if they were truly intimate life partners, they would be calling each other "thee" (the intimate one) all the time. But they're not. That leads me to the second point - that they're calling each other "you" to highlight Othello's decision shift. He could have come into the situation thinking he could maybe not do this, but he decides to go through with it when he changes his address.

In Romeo and Juliet, for example, Romeo uses "thou" to Juliet in their first meeting, because he's fallen INSTANTLY IN LOVE WITH HER, but she doesn't use the same for him until the balcony scene. In that scene, she uses "thou" as both an intimate term and also one instance of "WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON MY PROPERTY?? THIS IS MY SECRET DIARY MONOLOGUE TIME!" Of course, the first term is more frequently used in that monologue, because this is a thirteen-year-old girl doing Secret Diary Monologue Time; speaking as a former thirteen-year-old girl, the Secret Diary Time was frequently filled with things that went along the lines of "OMG, this is the most EPIC/ WORST/ BEST/ MOST GORGEOUS thing EVERRRRRRR." (There were a lot of superlatives, is what I'm trying to say, and Juliet is probably thinking they're going to be together forever and always. She gets married to a dude at 13 after knowing him for fewer than 100 hours, for crying out loud. If that doesn't say "I think we're going to be together forever," then you need to re-evaluate your concept of a healthy relationship.)

Sooooooo yeah. That's what I've been learning.