What is the difference between you and yourself in the following context?
- My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name.
- My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like you can call him by his name.
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1I feel like "you" is a more personal term, and "yourself" is more like a straightfoward term.– yuritsukiCommented Jun 5, 2012 at 4:49
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Hmm..I think "you" sounds more straightforward, and "yourself" sounds like the speaker is trying to be fancy. I get annoyed at the overuse of "self". For example, I often hear sentences such as: "The man gave apples to Ann and myself." Why not just say "me"?– JuliaCommented Jun 7, 2012 at 4:17
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Related.– tchrist ♦Commented Dec 27, 2022 at 15:10
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3 Answers
Both are grammatical. Pronouns like yourself are reflexive pronouns and they have two main uses. One is to ‘reflect’ the action described in the verb back onto the subject, as in ‘I hurt myself’. The other is to emphasise the doer or the recipient of an action, as in ‘I did it myself’. In your example, yourself is used slightly differently in that it’s preceded by a preposition. The effect is to draw greater attention to what the professor, as a sensible person, might be permitted to do.
answered Jun 5, 2012 at 7:12
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The reflexive pronoun yourself is the marked form here. To me it suggests that the speaker believes it shows a little more deference than the unmarked you.
And surely you mean surely not surly!
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What does it mean to say that something is the "marked" form here? Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 1:04
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@aparente001. From the entry on marked in The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics (p236): In general, of any unit, construction, etc. which is in any way a special case, which is more complex or is subject to more restrictions, which is perceived as unusual, or which is simply rarer.– ShoeCommented Nov 30, 2016 at 5:21
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Can you boil it down for me? I will make a stab. Are you saying The reflexive pronoun "yourself" is a special case? Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 5:23
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@aparente001. Garner, in Modern American Usage in the entry on reflexive pronouns (p466) states: The key to the use of reflexive pronouns is that each one should reflect an antecent. They are misused when they just stand in for personal pronouns. And Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (p971) in the entry on yourself says: The use of the reflexive yourself in constructions where they are not reflexive or intensive has been criticized since at least the time of MacCracken & Sandison, 1917.– ShoeCommented Nov 30, 2016 at 18:54
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A further definition of markedness is provided by Peters in The Cambridge Dictionary of English Grammar: Marked forms are usually relatively uncommon by comparison with their unmarked counterparts. ... This notion of markedness is more debatable than the first, because it relates to more abstract linguistic properties, and to relative frequencies which may be difficult to establish with any certainty. By the above definition, the reflexive pronoun can be considered marked in such a context as the OP's.– ShoeCommented Nov 30, 2016 at 18:55
The Use of youself if more appropriate in that you are describing the qualities of a person. "Yourself" is generally used when you are implying possession. In your example sentence, the person's possession here is the quality or character of sensibility. USe Yourself after your decribe someone or after you state the someone's possession.
