Reflexive pronouns to affect false intellectual tone

Question

In the comments on this answer from another question, a discussion was started regarding the way native speakers use reflexive pronouns to sound "more intellectual" (for example: "I myself have found in this research...").

I know it isn't correct in standard English, but I wonder if it has a literary history. Where does this come from? Has it been around for long? (All of my preliminary research has shown mostly anecdotal results, and I'm looking for actual data if it's available.)

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An alternate hypothesis posited that really it's the repetition ("I myself", "you yourself", etc.) that is desired to give the appearance of intellectualism, and the (improper) use of reflexive pronouns may merely be a means to achieve that goal. Is the use of repetition shown more frequently in "intellectual" speech than just through improper reflexive pronouns?

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(As an aside, I'd love to see anecdotes in the comments about whether this varies dramatically by region or other demographic grouping. I'm in the US, so my experiences are narrow.)

Answer 1

Starting a sentence with the words "I myself have found" is not grammatically incorrect.

From The Cambridge Dictionary:

Reflexive pronouns for emphasis

We can use reflexive pronouns for emphasis:

The director of the company wrote to us himself to apologise for the dreadful service. (or The director of the company himself wrote to us to apologise for the dreadful service.)

We don’t use reflexive pronouns on their own as the subject of a clause, but we can use them with a noun or pronoun to emphasise the subject:

Parents and teachers always pass on to children what they themselves have been told, and this has been going on for hundreds, or even thousands of years.

(This is about halfway down the page.)

While the use of a reflexive pronoun as an intensifier may be grammatically correct, however, excessive use of intensifiers leads to bad writing. In particular, pretentious speakers might put an unnecessary emphasis on their own role in whatever they are describing as a way to make themselves sound more important.