One Schoolhouse Rock That Should Be a Fossil

I want to find these teachers. Find them and shake their hands. And then go from clasping their hands in congratulations to wringing their necks out of frustration! I am talking about those nameless, faceless, far away in time and place teachers that must have had long pointy sticks, dusty black chalkboards, and occupied little schoolhouses with ugly, brownish wooden desks. Yet despite being a distant memory of a long since past they are still very much with us today as they are behind a major pedagogical triumph (failure?) in the English language: successfully getting generations of pupils and future adults to correctly use the nominative pronoun I in grammatical constructs of the type Sally and I went to the store. For this I shake each of these teacher’s hand. Not because I think it is important (arguably it’s not), but any generation of teachers that can have this lasting of an impact deserves a handshake and applause.

So why should my hands go from shaking and clapping to strangling? Because the same ardent emphasis on using the pronoun I for sentences in which I acts as the subject of a verb (as in “Sally and I went to the store”) was overgeneralized to also include its use for sentences in which I acts as the object of the verb (e.g. Sally’s mom took my sister and I to the store).

I realize these teachers likely had good intentions. These persistent pedants were only trying to root out what they perceived as the problem of students bringing the abomination of “Sally and me went to the store" from the streets and playgrounds into those little schoolhouses. Much chalk must have been wasted, accompanied by trauma inducing whacks to the board and desks, driving the grammatical point home: “It is Sally and I went to the store!” - whack whack!

In cleaning up the “Sally and me” usage, harmless as it seemingly is, these teachers were following what linguists call prescriptivism - the idea that language usage should always follow rules prescribed in a top-down manner. In no instance should language as taught defer to or reflect the type of language that is actually used on the street or the playground, nor its use be allowed by pupils without correction. It is as if teachers such as these see themselves as on a mission of protecting or saving our language against bottom-up encroachment. But is this really necessary?

In this case what the teachers are “saving” is adherence to a grammar rule that corresponds to English being a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language. We have individuals or things (subjects) doing actions (verbs) to or for other individuals or things (objects). The rules as they relate to these grammar structures are pretty simple and can be proficiently mastered by any three-year-old. “I went to the store” or “I gave the apple to her” are practically inviolable. We simply cannot, do not, and would not conceive of saying “Me went to the store” or “Me gave the apple to her” in the same sense that we would never say, “Her, apple me gave.” To say any of these variants is to not be speaking English.

However, things get tricky in English when we introduce compound subjects and objects (two or more individuals are involved with either the doing or receiving) and throw a conjunction in the equation. Consider the case of compound subjects specifically involving a singular first-person pronoun with another subject. English forbids the first-person speaker from being in initial position in such constructs such that we cannot have “I and Sally went to the store.” If a first-person subject is doing an action with someone else and I is used as the pronoun, it must come after the conjunction in the secondary position. But many people (apparently too many) had a compulsion to reference themselves first in such constructs. Individuals got around rule in casual conversation by saying sentences such as “Me and Sally went to the store.” Hence, the teachers and their sticks.

But with all those whacks of the stick, a funny (but predictable) thing happened along the way. Students turned adults living in the real world forgot the rule! They only remembered the “Its I . . . its I . . . make sure its I” admonishments followed by the teacher’s whacks! So paranoid about the rule and its accompanying whacks of the stick if violated, speakers started to toss in I for the object case as well saying things such as “My mom gave my sister and I money” and “My mom went to the store with Sally and I.”. The I is tossed in because it simply sounds correct. It sounds more educated and formal. We have a term for this overzealous effort of trying to sound correct to the point of being incorrect. We linguist call it: hypercorrection.

Generations of English users simply overgeneralized the use of I to be the correct and educated form in all grammatical positions. Prescriptivism and its rules, arbitrary as they are in language, if emphasized by teachers will eventually take on the tenor of that which is more educated, erudite, and correct. And this applies to all forms of grammatical usage despite whether those uses are reflective of what is actually said or not in a language.

We cannot imagine and would not tolerate this error if not for the environment of a compound subject/object with conjunction. “Mom gave permission to I to go the store” is just painful to hear as is “Sally went to the store with I.” But add a conjunction accompanying either subject pronouns or object pronouns to make it compound and we see I rear its ugly head. And we have our stick whacking “Sailly and I” schoolhouse teachers to thank for it.

It’s one schoolhouse rock that should be a fossil!

But it survives. A relic of the past ruling, ruing - and ruining - the present.

Me and other linguists hate it. Whack your stick at that!