Abstract
IN HIS ARTICLE Person and Number in the Use of We, You, and They (American Speech 53 [1978]: 18-39), M. Stanley Whitley covers the impersonal uses of these three personal pronouns. His study exposes an obvious problem that should not have remained in the dark so long, and asks most of the pertinent questions. I return to it because I believe that its mostly sound intuitions have been betrayed by its method. As so often happens with attempts at formal analysis of semantic problems, the need to keep one eye constantly on the formal apparatus interferes with the binocular process of getting the material in focus. I hope in the course of reworking Whitley's analysis to show where the trouble lies. The following sentences (p. 18) illustrate the usage in question:
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