One would think the airlines would have to close down.I suggested that "one" was more nuanced than commonly thought, in that "one" used by posh people had more the sense that "people like one of us".
One would think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
The young comedian was awful; one felt embarrassed for him.
If one fails, then one must try harder next time.
What is one to do? - What are people like one of us to do in a situation like this?
Common people don't use it because there is no such assumption of common standards of behaviour and morality.
do not after all quite have the same ring of subscribing to common standards of perception and morality, and have the subtext of taking the reader or hearer (the "you") into, er, one's confidence and appealing to others' standards of perception and morality.You would think the airlines would have to close down.
You would think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
The young comedian was awful; you felt embarrassed for him.
If you fail, then you must try harder next time.
In our age of moral relativism, it is only to be expected that one now rarely hears this generic pronoun being used.
4 comments:
'One' and 'you' are logically the same - they refer a listener or reader to a general standard of how an individual might behave, or react, or feel, in a particular situation, as opposed to how the speaker on this particular occasion decided s/he would behave, react or feel.
It is usual in English for there to be at least two clearly different ways of expressing roughly the same meaning.
One explanation for this lies perhaps in the mixed origins of the language.
Should it be posh Latin or the plain man's Saxon?
The difference is entirely one of register.
The notion that 'one' expresses a superior form of shared morality to 'you' exists entirely in the mind of the hearer.
Years ago - before I learnt better - I enraged a working class listener by using the term 'one' in an anecdote.
"Why say 'one' when you mean 'I'?" he demanded.
Therefore - except occasionally,
when one brings out the the best china, so to speak (as opposed to perhaps being among one's best chinas) one sticks with 'you'.
You know what I mean?
Yes, yes! That was exactly what I meant. Only posh people - the landed gentry, the aristocracy, call them what you will - USED to have common standards of morality, behaviour and speech.
U and NON-U by Nancy Mitford perfectly expresses this coded language.
"Settee" is another give-away word too about one's social origins. In one's circle only "sofa" is permissible. "Couch" is another no-no.
Posh people either talk about "going to the lavatory" or "having a pee" depending on what sort of company they think they are in.
My word of horror at the moment is "youngster", which I find more and more contemporaries of mine using.
I don't mind using "young people these days" or calling someone "young man" or "young lady" in a manner calculated to patronise and infuriate. There is something unspeakably horrid about the word "youngster" that I cannot quite explain.
I read Nancy Mitford’s list 30 years ago.
Among other sins were calling one’s vegetables ‘greens’ – but then who does these days?
(Well, my aunt used to, but she’s been dead 20 years.)
In my experience, no-one can say ‘lavatory’ nowadays. Hence ‘loo’ which is its short form.
‘Serviette’ used to obsess people, who learned they should say ‘napkin’ instead.
(But Americans say ‘napkin’ so how can that be right?)
And you were supposed to call a ‘coach’ a ‘bus’. But again this is what Americans do. Moreover a coach is surely a coach while a bus is a bus.
(Of course, Nancy Mitford would probably observe that no-one who ever needed to refer to a coach could possibly be ‘U’ – which isn’t really very helpful.)
And ‘mirror’ should be ‘looking glass’. But who bothers to call it that now?
Did you know even the word ‘mention’ was considered lower class?
The list needs updating, I think.
I look forward to your version.
British people will still part with good money for absurd books telling them what they should and should not say.
As though there weren’t more important things to worry about!
You are certainly right that we have more important things to think about.
When we now have the Department of Children, Schools and Families, this means that we no longer have a Department of Education.
When one has a Ministry of Justice that used to be called the Home Office, then one knows one cannot expect justice.
Liberalism has changed out of all recognition from the laissez faire Manchester Liberalism of Cobden and Bright to what is Political Correctness and the nanny state.
While the formerly Communist countries practise capitalism the so-called capitalist economies of the West now have "financial socialism".
It is also interesting that the party that presumes to represent British nationalism does not have an official and coherent definition of nationalism!
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