I think the first post I ever wrote for this blog was one of John McWhorter’s. I like the man, I like his books. He writes well, writes really well for a lay audience, and seemingly knows what he is talking about. But unfortunately he’s run his mouth, and in the process he had managed to piss off people in some politically charged times. Largely, he falls politically to the left, except for what Americans would label race issues, where he falls a bit right of center. He also worked for (I think) the Cato institute (a right wing think tank) at the beginning of his career, which reinforced these ideas.
But one can be right wing on one issue, and left wing on many others. For all the linguistic opinions I have encountered from McWhorter, those opinions are left wing.
All that preamble is there because with a title like Pronoun Trouble, one is bound to think that this book might be politically charged. McWhorter has to dispel this notion in the beginning of the book. And so there is the summary of the book for you. This is a book about pronouns, but not in the way that makes American right wing pundits lose their mind. Just, pronouns generally. It’s the historical account of each of the major English pronouns (the seven words from the subtitles: I, you, he, she, it, we, they) and how they came to be, plus a little bit about their quirks. It’s fun, if you like McWhorter and what at this point can just be called ‘his shtick’. I do, and I like his humor. What kind of humor is it? Well, the title itself comes from an old Looney Tunes episode, and is a quote from Daffy Duck.
That’s about all I can about this. Nothing in this book for me was new or all that riveting. I read it for sheer McWhorter fandom reasons. If you are interested in pop linguistics, there are better books. Hell, there are better books by McWhorter.
Failures in Polymathy 