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Do you like to use the pronoun "I"?
yes 50%  50%  [ 18 ]
no 22%  22%  [ 8 ]
I don't care 28%  28%  [ 10 ]
Total votes : 36

starkid
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09 Mar 2014, 4:40 pm

What is it about "I" that makes people not like to use it? I don't like it much, but I just thought that was a personal quirk. Now I see other people on WP who don't use it.



nuttyengineer
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09 Mar 2014, 5:03 pm

I use it to be grammatically correct when talking to another person, but for the most part I don't particularly care for it and will omit it if I'm writing something for myself. Don't really know what it is about it, that makes me dislike it, though, other than to me it seems a little arrogant to use it a lot. Actually, if I remember correctly, in some other languages "I" isn't really used.


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JSBACHlover
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09 Mar 2014, 5:17 pm

It's really no big deal to use the pronoun. There was a philosophical debate awhile back, stemming from a proposition from Wittgenstein, whether or not "I" actually refers to anything at all. G. E. M. Anscombe argued quite brilliantly that "I" has no referent. It's an interesting read, even though I don't agree with her at all.

(http://www.iep.utm.edu/anscombe/#H2)



CyclopsSummers
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09 Mar 2014, 5:43 pm

I know of a few WP users who do not use the pronoun 'I', but I forget why they don't. I seem to recall that it's not so much an issue of not liking the use of 'I', as much as it is a disconnect between some members' sense of self-identification and the pronoun 'I'. I saw a member explain her own personal reasons behind this a long, long time ago, and I was intrigued at the time, but I've forgotten the specifics surrounding it.

I'm neutral toward the word 'I'. I have a bit more trouble connecting my own given name to my identity, though.


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09 Mar 2014, 5:50 pm

JSBACHlover wrote:
G. E. M. Anscombe argued quite brilliantly that "I" has no referent.

Sounds a bit like Saul Kripke on whether a language can/should contain its own truth predicates (that is, "true" & "false" and their synonyms or equivalent constructs), especially in the presence of self-referencing statements. There is an idea of rewriting English to contain no variants of being but not one without "I", "We", etc.

At least, not that I know of :P


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JSBACHlover
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09 Mar 2014, 5:53 pm

Sometimes I'll say, "You" instead of "I," such as "well, that's something you ought to think about." A friend of mine really took objection to my use of "you" one time, because he thought I was exhorting him to adopt some idea I was expressing. My face turned red and I apologized, but he's still upset. Once I tell him I have HFA I think he'll forgive me.

You just have to give these things a try. (Oops 8O)



naturalplastic
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09 Mar 2014, 8:00 pm

starkid wrote:
What is it about "I" that makes people not like to use it? I don't like it much, but I just thought that was a personal quirk. Now I see other people on WP who don't use it.


You used it three times (after that first instance in the introductory sentence) in this brief post.

How much pain did it cause you to do that?



equestriatola
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09 Mar 2014, 8:08 pm

Yesh.


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09 Mar 2014, 9:04 pm

On here, the answer is sort of.


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10 Mar 2014, 2:23 am

In speech and text I use it because it is correct. But in my head I have always naturally used he. like "...and he has to go to the store later and then he said hi to Jon."
In papers I also don't use "I" but that is mostly because it's academic writing.


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EzraS
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10 Mar 2014, 3:34 am

starkid wrote:
What is it about "I" that makes people not like to use it? I don't like it much, but I just thought that was a personal quirk. Now I see other people on WP who don't use it.


That is a good question and have noticed it myself lately.
Realized I tend to drop it myself unintentionally.
Lots of times edit my post to add it to be grammatically correct.



886
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10 Mar 2014, 3:48 am

I know kingdom of rats doesn't use I, and uses am instead. I always thought it was kind of neat.

For what it's worth, I overuse "I" to begin a sentence, and I know I need to work on it.


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The_Walrus
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10 Mar 2014, 9:15 am

EzraS wrote:
starkid wrote:
What is it about "I" that makes people not like to use it? I don't like it much, but I just thought that was a personal quirk. Now I see other people on WP who don't use it.


That is a good question and have noticed it myself lately.
Realized I tend to drop it myself unintentionally.
Lots of times edit my post to add it to be grammatically correct.

Was it deliberate in this post?

I sometimes do it, but not nearly to the extent that KingdomOfRats and a few others do.



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10 Mar 2014, 9:30 am

I find that the more that I use I in conversation, the more I am drawing people's attentions to my ego . If I say I too much, i can become all too self aware, i can end up feeling embarrassed because i more easily lose my place, I throw in a few Umm's and Arr's here and there and I am suddenly lost.



linatet
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10 Mar 2014, 10:24 am

I have always wondered why some people here don't use it too.
in my language it's different because the reference to the pronoun is in the verb conjugation, so we don't use many "I". I feel like not writing it when writing in English but I think it's influence of my native language.



Tuttle
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10 Mar 2014, 11:23 am

I swap to "we" very frequently, and have actually gotten multiple upset responses about things like "who is 'we'" or "I'm not part of that" or such.

In math, "we" is frequently used to mean "the author and the readers" in terms of "we know this" (the readers know this now that they've read what the author have written), and I have that habit really strongly. It's a convention that feels natural to me.

What I avoid is writing that uses pronouns much at all that isn't "I"/"we". It's unnatural and icky to use pronouns just because they're there.


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