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Egocentricity 
in the English Generic Pronouns: 

Semantics and Pragmatics

A person’s awareness of the world begins with thedelimitation of his or her ego from other people,
and the use of the pronoun “I” signifies the starting point
of self-perception. According to O.Jespersen, “The elder
Fichte used to celebrate not his son’s birthday but the day
on which he first spoke of himself as “I” (Jespersen O.,
1922:128).  

Within the language system, it is hardly possible to
outline, however roughly, the functional spheres of the
word “I”. Strictly speaking, neither language, nor more so
speech, which evidently centres on the “I” of the speaker,
is thinkable without the existence of this pronoun. All that
is said or written is an act of speech in which the
speaker’s/writer’s ego is expressed either explicitly or

implicitly. According to J.Lyons,” The canonical situation of utterance is egocentric in
the sense that the speaker, by virtue of being the speaker, casts himself in the role of ego
and relates everything to his viewpoint” (Lyons J., 1977:638). 

Besides the general egocentricity of speech organization, every language has lexical
units termed “egocentric words” or “egocentric particulars” that are related to the
pronoun “I” so intimately that their meaning remains obscure without reference to the
speaker.

As to the pronominal class, the pronoun “I”, naturally, has an even greater weight
in it, not only because it is basic to the speech act itself, but also because the status of
a number of pronouns is defined through their relations with the first person pronoun.

This is the case with the generic pronouns “one”, “you” and “we”. Ö.Dahl, for
instance, unites the generic and personal pronouns and calls them “egocentric”: “…
generic pronouns are semantically quite close to first and second person pronouns. Even
when generic pronouns are not just a way of talking about oneself without sounding too
pretentious they are used to describe the world the way it looks from the participants’
point of view” (Dahl Ö., 1997:10).            

Our description of the generic pronouns is based on the approach to the concept of
pronominal meaning put forward by O.Selivyorstova (Ñåëèâåðñòîâà O.H.,
1988:224). According to her, the lexical meaning of the pronoun consists of two layers:
the so-called level of characterization and that of indication. The former characterizes
the participant of the situation as either a class, a member of a class or as an individual.
The latter contains indication as to where the participant is located or can be found.

In the light of this approach we suggest that the meaning of the generic pronouns

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Linguistics Armenian Folia Anglistika

Marika Tonyan



should be described as having two basic characteristics: 1) the referent of these words is
characterized as a generic person, and 2) the participant of the situation is either the
speaker, or any other person whom the speaker presents as one of his/her kind. At first
sight, the special emphasis on the inclusion of the speaker into the denotation sphere of
these pronouns seems unnecessary, as the concept of generic person should make no
exception for anybody. However, the semantic analysis of the pronouns “one”, “you”
and “we” shows the validity of recognizing “I-inclusion” as a separate component.     

1. Let us provide evidence to demonstrate that the referent of the pronouns under
consideration is represented as a generic person. Apparently, their referent is not a
specific one, there being a restriction on combining these words with particular time
markers. The sentence “One came yesterday” is anomalous. However, this is not a
satisfactory reason for terming these pronouns “indefinite”. As a matter of fact,
indefinite lexical units imply that there is no information about their referent or that it is
not sufficient. Therefore, the speaker can ask the hearer to provide such information and
the latter may be supplied. E.g. “Somebody’s knocking at the door.” “Who is it?”  “It’s
the man next door.”

On the contrary, the information we receive from the generic pronouns is self-
sufficient. It is neither lacking, nor vague. Normally, we do not put any questions to the
agent expressed by “one”, “you” or “we”. For example, “One/you/we lives/live and
learns/learn” does not encourage the hearer to put a question for the identification of the
subject of the sentence. On the other hand, it is quite natural to ask a  “who” question if
the  agent  is  expressed  by  the  indefinite pronoun “they”. 

E.g. “They say John’s going to marry Jane.” “Who “they”?” or “Who says that?”
“Jane herself, actually.”

From these facts it follows that it is justifiable to qualify the pronouns “one”, “you”
and “we” as generic.

2. The existence of the second component of meaning, namely that of “I-inclusion”,
in the generic pronouns can be proved by a number of linguistic facts. In this paper we
shall try to touch upon some of them, eventually trying to characterize the pragmatic and
functional impact of the egocentric component.

The inclusion of the speaker into the meaning of the generic pronouns is related to
another factor: the generic pronouns are usually used in sentences which are put into a
context or a speech situation. However, a question may arise about the wide use of
generic pronouns in proverbs, aphorisms and the like. True, these generalizations may
often be found in isolation; nevertheless, there is a potential context behind them. They
tell us something “about you and me”, in other words, the presence of the potential
participants in the speaker’s mind is essential.

In this connection the interpretation of the so-called empty context is important.
”Katz suggests that in order to ascertain whether a linguistic feature is context-dependent
or context-independent, we imagine the feature occurring on an anonymous postcard (as
an approximation to the empty or null context)” (Levinson S., 1983:8). Searle, however,
argues that “There is no such thing as the zero or null context for the interpretation of
sentences…we understand the meaning of such sentences only against a set of

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background assumptions about the context in which the sentence could be appropriately
uttered” (Searle J.R., 1979:117).

This is the case with the generic pronouns: even when used in isolation, the sentences
containing a generic pronoun imply the participation of the speaker/writer and a hearer
or a potential reader in the given situation.

Let us observe some linguistic data received from our work with native speakers,
whose evidence is essential for the verification and confirmation of the hypothesis put
forward above.  

Generic reference can also be realized by nouns, e.g. “Man is a mammal.” This
sentence is relatively independent of the context. More specifically, it can be used
against a set of background assumptions about the nature of man; that is to say, the
potential context is very wide.

Two informants were asked to substitute the word “man” for a generic pronoun. They
found it impossible to do so without putting the sentence into a specific speech situation.
After the transformations (the situation was worked out together with the informants),
the result was as follows. Let us suppose that a young mother is not allowed to feed her
new-born baby, and this makes her unhappy. Her interlocutor wonders why she should
worry so much and can say: “What’s all this fuss about suckling your baby?” The mother
will answer: “Well, one is a mammal, isn’t one? One naturally has mammalian instincts
and wants to suckle one’s own baby.” 

Besides putting the given sentence into a context, the requirement for the possibility
of using “one”, according to the informants, was reference to an actual participant,
presumably the speaker or anyone else whom the speaker considered to be one of her
like.

For the same reason, in some other cases the informants were reluctant to use a
generic pronoun. For example, in the sentence “When a man commits a suicide, people
do not always know the cause” none of the 5 informants used a generic pronoun. Their
reaction to “When we/you/one commit/commits a suicide…” was that of psychological
aversion. In other words, even though the sentence did not violate grammatical norms,
semantically and pragmatically it was unusual and disagreeable: the speaker does not
usually include himself/herself in the scope of the potential participants of a morbid
situation.

Likewise, when given an extraordinary situation with a missing subject they were
inclined to supply lexical units other than the generic pronouns. For example, “If
we/you/one met a Martian…” would be less common than “If anyone/ an astronaut met
a Martian…” in which cases the hypothetical situation required either a hypothetical
agent (“anyone”) or an agent more appropriate for the unusual situation (“astronaut”).

A question may naturally arise: how generalization can be combined with a focus
on something as unique as the personality of the speaker. We suggest the following
attitude to the problem. In fact, the generic pronouns characterize their referent as a
representative of a group similar to the speaker (“others are like me”); in other
words, the use of the generic pronouns presupposes a potential participation of any
human being (provided he or she is one of the peer-group centred on the speaker) in

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the given situation. The bases for including others in this peer-group vary: they may
be the participants’ social status, their common background, level of education, age,
sex, etc.                     

An interesting interpretation of the differences between “I” and “one” is found in
B.Rotman’s article “Going Parallel”. B.Rotman speaks about the age of computers
when “human nature is melting” and the result is posthumanity. He writes: “Once,
not so long ago, little more than a generation in fact, there was a clear and distinct
binary, an absolute opposition of self versus non-self. An I/me consciously and
securely present to myself, fully defined and ranged against an external, collective
other; an autonomous first person, indivisible, privately interior, invariant nucleus of
being versus a they, an amorphous shifting collectivity of third persons outside my
skin. The variable for such a subject, for a self that could range indifferently and
arbitrarily over the social other, was the abstract pronoun one” (Rotman B.,
2000:60). 

In this definition we see a clear opposition of  “self” against “non-self”. On the one
hand, there is the concept of “I” (“an autonomous first person, indivisible, privately
interior, invariant nucleus of being”) and on the other, “they” (“an amorphous shifting
collectivity of third persons outside my skin”). The pronoun “one” is a variable for the
“I”, for a “self that could range indifferently and arbitrarily over the social other”. It is
noteworthy that B.Rotman qualifies those who are involved in “one”, by expanding the
limits of the individual and the individual’s rights: “Since the Renaissance, a whole
social fabric, associated legal code and apparatus of moral responsibility, a system of
private ownership and individual rights and duties has been constructed to rest on such
a one (Rotman B., 2000:61). 

The egocentric component of meaning which is present in the generic pronouns
makes it possible for them to perform the perlocutionary function of linguodemagogy.
According to T.Nikolaeva, who suggested the term, “linguodemagogy is a
perlocutionary phenomenon the essence of which lies in the evaluative influence upon
the hearer, which is carried out indirectly” (Íèêîëàåâà Ò.Ì. 1988:155). The chief
reason for linguodemagogical influence is intolerance to the feeling of social solitude.
Whenever such a feeling arises, a person tends to lean against a certain social layer, a
communicatively “full” space, for support. Even if there is no such stratum in reality, one
builds it up by linguistic means. As a result, the speaker makes the hearer believe that
what he or she says is shared by a whole social group, and this group is made up of
people similar to the speaker (and very often the hearer). Thus, the user of a generic
pronoun functions as a spokesman who verbalizes the opinion of the group generated by
him or her.

A similar differentiation between a peer group and all the others, who do not belong
to it, is done by Paul Riqueur, who notes that it is possible to distinguish between two
meanings of the concept of  “another person”: “there exists another person whom I
consider a personality and can look upon him as “you” and others who are like all the
rest and whom I do not see as a personality, and I am connected with them institutionally,
e.g. with the postman delivering mail” (Ðèêåð Ï., 1995:108).  M.Halliday formulates

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this in a very simple manner: “You” and “one” often by implication denote any person I
would  approve of  (Halliday  M.A.K.,  Hasan R., 1978: 39).    

The semantic peculiarity of the generic pronouns under consideration and the
perlocutionary effect they are able to realize accounts for the use of these pronouns in
scientific and official registers. In these registers of speech the speaker/writer
deliberately avoids putting forward his or her personality. At the same time, the use of
the generic pronouns suggests a connection between the speaker and hearer or the writer
and reader. In this way the message is directed to a group of supporters, or the social
group of those “who are like me”.

Ö.Dahl remarks: “In many kinds of written texts, personal pronouns such as I and you
are virtually banned. This is connected with the fact that many written documents – news
items, unsigned encyclopedia articles, legal documents of various kinds – are not
considered as having a personal “sender” or “receiver” in the sense that a spoken
utterance has a speaker and a listener. Even in genres where the author can be identified,
using a pronoun like I is sometimes considered bad tone. The plural pronoun we often
occurs where I does not” (Dahl Ö, 1997: 48).        

In consequence, the perlocutionary effect of convincing the addressee and achieving
the goal of transmitting the sender’s intention is successfully realized. This is the reason
why proverbs, maxims, aphorisms, etc. abound in generic pronouns. Being expressions
of collective or individual wisdom they generalize a piece of experience and raise it to
the status of a norm shared by people belonging to this or that group. The size of the
group varies: it can include the whole mankind, a nation, and a much narrower social
circle.

On the other hand, whenever the purpose of the utterance is to confine the sphere of
activity by the speaker, the pronoun “I” is exclusively preferred. Thus, the pronoun “I”
is deictically marked, while the generic pronouns are not. While the first person pronoun
is a member of a distinct opposition (“I” vs. “you”), there is no strict opposition between
the generic pronouns and any other linguistic unit. Consequently, only the first person
pronoun can be used when indication to the speaker or contrast with non-speakers is
relevant.

At the same time, the pronoun “I” expresses the highest degree of  individualization,
as in the following questions from the Talmud.

• If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
• If I am for myself only, what am I? 
• If not now, when? 
Obviously, the pronouns “one”, “you” and “we” might be used in these cases, but the

meaning of self-awareness, uniqueness and individuality would be lost. In fact, the
quoted wisdom requires emphasis on these particular features. Hence, the pronoun “I”
cannot be substituted without change of meaning of the whole challenging utterance.   

In conclusion we can say that the generic pronouns are to be found among egocentric
lexical units, and the focus on the speaker/writer predetermines the organization of the
speech event in which they occur.                                                                 

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References:

1.  Íèêîëàåâà Ò.Ì. Ëèíãâèñòè÷åñêàÿ äåìàãîãèÿ.  êí.: Ïðàãìàòèêà
è ïðîáëåìû èíòåíöèîíàëüíîñòè. Ì., 1988.

2. Ðèêåð Ï. Ãåðìåíåâòèêà, ýòèêà, ïîýòèêà. Ì.,1995.
3.  Ñåëèâåðñòîâà Î.Í. Ìåñòîèìåíèÿ â ÿçûêå è   ðå÷è. Ì.,1988.
4. Dahl Ö. Egocentricity in Discourse and Syntax. 1997. 

In: http:www.ling.su.se/staff/oesten/egocentric.
5.  Halliday M.A.K., Hasan R. Cohesion in English, London, 1978.
6.. Jespersen O. Essentials of English Grammar, London, 1946.
7.  Levinson S. Pragmatics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983.
8.  Lyons J. Semantics, v.2, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
9. Rotman B. Going Parallel. In: SubS 21. Ohio, JHU Press, 2000, 

http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/substance/v029/29.1rotman.html
10.Searle J.R. Expression and Meaning. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979.

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Armenian Folia Anglistika                                                                                  Linguistics