Illeism

Illeism ( English illeism ) is a latinisierende word of English education without direct model in Latin , formed from the Latin pronoun ille ( "that" Vulgar. Also "he") and the Nominalsuffix -ism (lat. Ism ), and now referred to usually speaking of himself in the third person by the personal pronoun of the first person singular by a personal pronoun of the third person singular or a noun is replaced. Children before their second birthday cannot perceive themselves as an independent person, so parents often talk to them in the third person and say e.g. B. “Come to Papa” instead of “Come to me”.

The term is used for the occasional as well as for the habitual or (as in Caesar's De bello Gallico ) generic systematic use of this idiom. Sometimes it is also defined in a further, indefinitely quantifying meaning as "excessive" use of the personal pronoun of the third person singular, whereby the referential reference to the speaker himself is not always seen as a necessary defining feature.

Examples

Mother: "Who wants chocolate?" - Miriam: "Mimi chocolate!"
"The author of these lines is aware ..."
"When they were together in Galilee, Jesus said to them, The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men" (Mt 17:22)
"Caesar led his troops to the next hill and set them up in order of battle" (Caesar, De bello Gallico , I, xxii, 3)

Word history

The word illegalism is first used at the beginning of the 19th century by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a contrast to egotism (from Latin ego 'I') and an analogy to tuism (from Latin do 'you'). It is related to his advocacy of an honest , not boastful egotism that goes straight to the point. The are compared illeism and tuism than two variants of an "excessive" only ostensibly humble, driven in fact by self-seeking avoidance of the pronoun "I" in the not represented his own opinion as its own, but another person (in illeism as "he "Statement, in tuism as" you "statement) is cited as their representative with praising approval in order to indirectly stage one's own excellence. In a somewhat different meaning, Ileridge appears in connection with a type of criticism that he rejected, in which, for a generally accepted opinion, it is not the general public itself that is criticized, but a single, otherwise usually outstanding representative of this opinion: this one In the case, the pronoun “he” does not take the place of “I” for the subject of the statement, but instead of “man” for its object. In both cases, in Coleridge's understanding, illegalism is not speaking about oneself as if one were someone else, but rather speaking about an actually different person as a strategy of indirect self-praise or indirect criticism. The latter then also forms the not always transparent understanding background for more recent word explanations, which define illegalism as the excessive use of the pronoun of the third person singular, but not necessarily with a referential reference to the speaker himself.

Illeism remained an only sporadically used expression without a fixed meaning in the rest of the 19th century, and so also in the first three quarters of the 20th century, in which it was partly already in the narrower or wider meaning that is usual today, partly also in a completely different meaning which only forms a common intersection with the 'excessive' use of the pronoun he , namely for the redundant doubling of a nominal subject by adding a personal pronoun ( Tom he went to the bank ).

It only became more widespread in the wake of an essay on William Shakespeare by S. Viswanathan (1967), who further differentiated Ilseism there by distinguishing pronominalen Ilseism as "Ilseism proper" and nominal Ilseism as "Ilseism with a difference". While this internal terminological differentiation has not established itself as a linguistic character, illegalism has since established itself as a technical term in English-language Shakespeare research, and from here it has also achieved a certain spread in other areas of the English-language humanities.

In other language specialist literature it has not yet been adapted, but due to its popularization on the Internet and in English-language Wikipedia, it has also become known in the German-language Internet in the form of 'Illeism'.

In the literature

Classical literature, such as the Commentarii de Bello Gallico by Julius Caesar or Anabasis by Xenophon, tell of wars that the author waged. They use illegalisms to simulate a semblance of objectivity and impartiality, which includes justifications for questionable actions by warlords. In this way, personal views are presented as seemingly objective facts.

Illeism can also be used to hide at least for a while that the narrator of a plot and one of the main characters are the same person. For example, in one of his stories, Arsène Lupine is the narrator, but he hides his identity. The narration in the third person suggests an outside observer. It is similar when a writer introduces himself as a character in a narrative that is written in the third person, like Charlie Kaufman in the film Adaptation or Douglas Coupland in JPod . Clive Cussler practically made a rule out of it in his novels, beginning with Dragon . There are also novels in which Illeismen may have been used, even if not explicitly may be so, as with the traveler in The Time Machine ( The Time Machine ) by HG Wells , from which it is often assumed that he was Wells himself, as shown in the film Escape into the Future ( Time After Time from 1979).

Illeism can also be used as an artistic means to convey the feeling of an out of body experience. Being outside of one's own body and seeing things happen is represented here as psychological isolation, a result of trauma, such as physical or sexual abuse in childhood, of psychotic episodes or of experiences or acts that do not deal with the inner, mental Reconciling the self-image of the person concerned.

Often in science fiction , robots , computers and artificial life forms also speak about themselves in the third person. For example, they say, “This entity is defective” or “Number five is alive” ( number 5 is alive in the movie ! ) To indicate that these creatures are not really self- aware or that they have separated their consciousness from their physical appearance see.

Illeism is also a means of depicting idiocy , as in the figure Mongo in Blazing Saddles with statements such as "Mongo likes sweets" and "Mongo is only a pawn in the chess game of life."

In politics

The former Austrian politician Stefan Petzner is known for frequently using Illeisms.

Remarks

^ Bryan G. Garner: Garner's Modern American Usage . Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford 2009, p. 899: "Reference to oneself in the third person, either by the third-person pronoun ( he, she ) or by name or label"
↑ Gerlinde Unverzagt: Ego disorder Why adults speak of themselves in the third person when they talk to children . In Sonntag Aktuell from September 13, 2015
^ ^A ^b E.g. David Grambs: Literary Companion Dictionary: Words about Words . Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1985, p. 181: “Affected or excessive use of the third-person pronoun 'he' (or 'one'), esp. in reference to oneself ". Joseph A. DeVito: The Communication Handbook: A Dictionary . Harper & Row, New York [et al. a.] 1986, p. 152: "The practice of using the third person pronoun excessively, especially in referring to oneself"
↑ ^a ^b ^c E.g. James AH Murray: A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles , Volume 5, letter “I”, p. 42, sv Illeism : “Excessive use of the pronoun he (either in reference to another person or to oneself in the third person). (...) So I · lleist, one who makes much use of the pronoun he , or writes of himself as he ";. Hardin Craig, Joseph M. Thomas: English Prose of the Nineteenth Century . Crofts, New York 1929, p. 762 to 17 a. 51: "excessive use of the pronoun he , often with reference to oneself in the third person". Robert Shafer: From Beowulf to Thomas Hardy , Volume 2. Doubleday / Odyssey Press, Madiscon WI 1944, p. 243: "Excessive use of the pronoun he , with reference either to another or to one's self in the 3rd person"
↑ James C. McKusick , Living Words: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Genesis of the OED . In: Modern Philology , 90 (1992), pp. 1-45, p. 32
^ Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Friend . Gale and Curtis, London 1812, Essay No. 2 (June 8, 1809), pp. 17-32, pp. 24f .: “It has ever been my opinion, that an excessive solicitude to avoid the use of our first personal pronoun more often has its' source in conscious selfishness than in true self-oblivion. A quiet observer of human follies may often amuse or sadden his thoughts by detecting the perpetual feeling of purest Egotism through a long masquerade of Tu-isms and Ille-isms ". Same: On the Catholic Petition. II (September 21, 1811). In: Collected Works , Part III: David W. Erdman (Ed.): Essays on His Times , Volume 2. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1978, pp. 305-308, p. 306: “To similar impulses we must attribute the praises of a true modern reader, when he meets with a work in the true modern taste (...) 'Aye!' (quoth the delighted reader) 'this is sense, this is genius! this I understand and admire! I have thought the very same a hundred times myself! 'In other words, this man has reminded me of my own cleverness, and therefore I admire him. O! for one piece of egotism that presents itself under its own honest bare face of 'I myself I', there are fifty that steal out in the mask of tuisms and illegal-isms ! ". The same: Biographia Literaria , Volume I. Penner, London 1817, p. 10: “I have sometimes ventured to think, that a list of this kind, or an index expurgatorius of certain well known and ever returning phrases, both introductory, and transitional , including the large assortment of modest egotisms, and flattering illegalisms, & c. & c. might be hung up in our law courts, and both houses of parliament, with great advantage to the public, as an important saving of national time "
↑ Samuel Taylor Colerdige: Letters, Conversations, and Recollections . Harper & Brothers, New York 1836, Letter No. V (December 13, 1819), pp. 22-25, p. 24: “When we see a man so highly gifted, so far differing from the common sense of his contemporaries and immediate successors, stigmatize as a wretch one of the most extraordinary writers of the day, for holding opinions which those contemporaries have adopted for the greatest part, and many gone far beyond, we are forcibly struck with the absurdity of all illegal-isms and affirmations . If we confine ourselves to the expression of an opinion, or, if more honest, we confess our ignorance of the matter at issue, we shall be more likely to approach true conclusions. "
↑ For example, valued as positive but unspecified rhetoric of modesty ( "the unassumption and deference of illeism " page 27) and antonym of egotism (see p. 26) in a polemic against William Hazlitt in James Silk Buckingham Oriental Herald 3 (1824), pp. 23-27; or as a parallel term to tuism in an ethical-religious and pejorative but unspecified sense in a contribution The Church of Christ in James Wallis ' British Millenial Harbinger , Series III, Volume VII (1854), p. 258 (“the tuisms and illegalisms among men ")
↑ John B. Opdycke: Say what you mean. Everyman's guide to diction and grammar . Funk & Wagnalls, New York a. a. 1944, p. 31
↑ S. Viswanathan: Illeism with a Difference in Certain Middle Plays of Shakespeare . In: Shakespeare Quarterly , 20, 1969, pp. 407-415. Again in The Same: Exploring Shakespeare. The Dynamics of Playmaking . Orient Longman Private Limited, Hyderabad / New Delhi 2005, pp. 3-15
↑ Andrew S. Mallone: God the Illeist: third-person self-references and Trinitarian hints in the Old Testament . In: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society , 52,3, 2009, pp. 499-518, p. 499, note 1
↑ It is often dirty too. The BZÖ deputy Stefan Petzner on Carinthia, corruption, the Saualm, his confused “ZiB” interview and the dirty work for his man of life Jörg Haider . In: falter.at. July 17, 2012, accessed October 7, 2014 .

[1] Bryan G. Garner: Garner's Modern American Usage . Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford 2009, p. 899: "Reference to oneself in the third person, either by the third-person pronoun ( he, she ) or by name or label"

[2] Gerlinde Unverzagt: Ego disorder Why adults speak of themselves in the third person when they talk to children . In Sonntag Aktuell from September 13, 2015

[excess-3] A ^b E.g. David Grambs: Literary Companion Dictionary: Words about Words . Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1985, p. 181: “Affected or excessive use of the third-person pronoun 'he' (or 'one'), esp. in reference to oneself ". Joseph A. DeVito: The Communication Handbook: A Dictionary . Harper & Row, New York [et al. a.] 1986, p. 152: "The practice of using the third person pronoun excessively, especially in referring to oneself"

[HistoricalPrinciples-4] E.g. James AH Murray: A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles , Volume 5, letter “I”, p. 42, sv Illeism : “Excessive use of the pronoun he (either in reference to another person or to oneself in the third person). (...) So I · lleist, one who makes much use of the pronoun he , or writes of himself as he ";. Hardin Craig, Joseph M. Thomas: English Prose of the Nineteenth Century . Crofts, New York 1929, p. 762 to 17 a. 51: "excessive use of the pronoun he , often with reference to oneself in the third person". Robert Shafer: From Beowulf to Thomas Hardy , Volume 2. Doubleday / Odyssey Press, Madiscon WI 1944, p. 243: "Excessive use of the pronoun he , with reference either to another or to one's self in the 3rd person"

[5] James C. McKusick , Living Words: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Genesis of the OED . In: Modern Philology , 90 (1992), pp. 1-45, p. 32

[6] Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Friend . Gale and Curtis, London 1812, Essay No. 2 (June 8, 1809), pp. 17-32, pp. 24f .: “It has ever been my opinion, that an excessive solicitude to avoid the use of our first personal pronoun more often has its' source in conscious selfishness than in true self-oblivion. A quiet observer of human follies may often amuse or sadden his thoughts by detecting the perpetual feeling of purest Egotism through a long masquerade of Tu-isms and Ille-isms ". Same: On the Catholic Petition. II (September 21, 1811). In: Collected Works , Part III: David W. Erdman (Ed.): Essays on His Times , Volume 2. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1978, pp. 305-308, p. 306: “To similar impulses we must attribute the praises of a true modern reader, when he meets with a work in the true modern taste (...) 'Aye!' (quoth the delighted reader) 'this is sense, this is genius! this I understand and admire! I have thought the very same a hundred times myself! 'In other words, this man has reminded me of my own cleverness, and therefore I admire him. O! for one piece of egotism that presents itself under its own honest bare face of 'I myself I', there are fifty that steal out in the mask of tuisms and illegal-isms ! ". The same: Biographia Literaria , Volume I. Penner, London 1817, p. 10: “I have sometimes ventured to think, that a list of this kind, or an index expurgatorius of certain well known and ever returning phrases, both introductory, and transitional , including the large assortment of modest egotisms, and flattering illegalisms, & c. & c. might be hung up in our law courts, and both houses of parliament, with great advantage to the public, as an important saving of national time "

[7] Samuel Taylor Colerdige: Letters, Conversations, and Recollections . Harper & Brothers, New York 1836, Letter No. V (December 13, 1819), pp. 22-25, p. 24: “When we see a man so highly gifted, so far differing from the common sense of his contemporaries and immediate successors, stigmatize as a wretch one of the most extraordinary writers of the day, for holding opinions which those contemporaries have adopted for the greatest part, and many gone far beyond, we are forcibly struck with the absurdity of all illegal-isms and affirmations . If we confine ourselves to the expression of an opinion, or, if more honest, we confess our ignorance of the matter at issue, we shall be more likely to approach true conclusions. "

[8] For example, valued as positive but unspecified rhetoric of modesty ( "the unassumption and deference of illeism " page 27) and antonym of egotism (see p. 26) in a polemic against William Hazlitt in James Silk Buckingham Oriental Herald 3 (1824), pp. 23-27; or as a parallel term to tuism in an ethical-religious and pejorative but unspecified sense in a contribution The Church of Christ in James Wallis ' British Millenial Harbinger , Series III, Volume VII (1854), p. 258 (“the tuisms and illegalisms among men ")

[9] John B. Opdycke: Say what you mean. Everyman's guide to diction and grammar . Funk & Wagnalls, New York a. a. 1944, p. 31

[10] S. Viswanathan: Illeism with a Difference in Certain Middle Plays of Shakespeare . In: Shakespeare Quarterly , 20, 1969, pp. 407-415. Again in The Same: Exploring Shakespeare. The Dynamics of Playmaking . Orient Longman Private Limited, Hyderabad / New Delhi 2005, pp. 3-15

[11] Andrew S. Mallone: God the Illeist: third-person self-references and Trinitarian hints in the Old Testament . In: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society , 52,3, 2009, pp. 499-518, p. 499, note 1

[12] It is often dirty too. The BZÖ deputy Stefan Petzner on Carinthia, corruption, the Saualm, his confused “ZiB” interview and the dirty work for his man of life Jörg Haider . In: falter.at. July 17, 2012, accessed October 7, 2014 .