Confessing Evangelical

In the comments on my post about cynicism (which started out as a post on cycling, but then went a-wandering, as posts so often do), David commented that "Another reason for avoiding cynicism is that cynicism is what THEY want :-)".

This called to mind the wonderful article written by Matthew Parris in the Spectator about 18 months ago, entitled "Just who are They, and what are They up to?", in which he looks at the English-language habit of referring to un-named groups of people as "they". (The link is to a tidied-up version on my long blog, as the original is so badly formatted as to be almost unreadable). Parris writes:

The third-person plural is a marvellously sloppy get-out. ‘I’ or ‘we’ might involve personal complicity; ‘you’ or ‘he’ points an invidious finger and invites a comeback. But the use of ‘they’ allows the speaker to shift responsibility on to a sketchy entity just about able to bear the weight of our grievance, but not so clearly outlined as to amount to anything we could confront, check our facts with, or take our complaints or inquiries to. ‘They’ have no address or telephone number and do not stand for Parliament. The term is a shorthand for saying, ‘This is my grouse but I don’t plan to do anything about it’: a sort of generalised shrug which suggests there wouldn’t be any point. They never listen anyway.

Parris continues:

I can think of no better unwitting guide to a modern individual’s estimation of his and his peers’ own powerlessness in the universe than his recourse to the third-person plural as a shorthand for other human beings. Do you think that we have set foot on the Moon, or that they have? Do you think that we are searching for a cure for cancer, or that they are? Can we fly faster than the speed of sound these days, or can they? Do we understand the origins of the universe, or do they? Will we – or they? – be cloning humans next?

Note that one can say (for instance) that ‘we’ are searching for a cure for cancer without meaning to imply that one is doing so oneself. I can without hesitation write that ‘we’ may be about to go to war with Iraq when I myself would disapprove of this and might refuse to go myself. I say ‘we’ because I feel involved in national decisions; I feel this is my country, in whose policies I have a say and for whose actions I bear a responsibility.

Do read the rest of the article, if only for the pleasure of reading more of Parris' typically exquisite writing.