Chez Guevara wishes to know whether there are any extant languages which do not benefit from the option of a first person singular form.
His curiosity extends yet further. He desires to be informed whether any such languages have existed in the past. Finally, and thankfully, he has but one more question. Is there, or has there been, a stratum of society anywhere which employed the third person singular as a habit or custom, combined of course with calling oneself by one’s own name, when a perfectly good first person singular was available as an alternative?
Chez Guevara knows full well that this is the just the kind of question that will have been asked on these boards before. Well, he can’t find it and so gets his apologies in first.
Professional athlete. I seem to recall that, for instance, former NBA star Karl Malone loved to talk about what Karl Malone was feeling and what Karl Malone was thinking and what Karl Malone had for breakfast.
If “stratum of society” includes “particular social/professional context”, then yes. One example I can think of is that of medieval Indian authors writing “auto-commentaries” (i.e., commentaries on their own works) in classical Sanskrit.
The convention of the commentarial genre is to refer to the author of the base-text in the third person (e.g., "[the base-text author] Devadatta says:
[quote from Devadatta…]
This means […] Now he [i.e., Devadatta] says: […]" and so on). This convention is followed even when the commentator is Devadatta himself. So the commentator is referring to the author, i.e., himself, in the third person.
I know that Korean and Japanese do have a third-person way of referring to oneself, but no one really uses it any more. It was used to lower yourself when talking to someone way above you.
On a tangent, Korean has an odd way of referring to a third-person by way of a second-person pronoun in order to show respect to said third-person. It confused the hell out of me when I was taking Korean grammar.
Interestingly, one of the traits exhibited by people with “classic” Asperger’s Syndrome is reference to themselves in the third person (see third paragraph here). Perhaps this suggests that the use of the first person is almost hard-wired into us and only fails in circumstances of pathology. Just a WAG.
By ‘stratum of society’ I was thinking primarily of a group of people who communicate with each other in this way. For example there may be a reclusive Amazonian tribe whose leaders hold meetings at which, for whatever reason, each participant refers to him/herself in the third person. Maybe they talk like this when they aren’t in meetings as well. Who knows?
That said, I also like the individual examples given upthread.
A further question that now springs to mind is whether two people with Asperger’s Syndrome would converse in the third person.
In high school I knew a fella named Tom. Tom was quiet, had a dark deadpan sense of humor, and was in the habit of referring to himself as “Tom,” eg: “Tom’s very tired today,” or “Tom’s not looking forward to midterms.” Tom and I were going to play a bass clarinet duet at the band festival, except that the school only owned one bass clarinet, and I, a saxophone player, could not find a second in time.
Tom was very good friends with this girl I had a toxic crush on, to the point where I would quiz Tom for what she was up to, how she was doing. etc. Tom later turned out to be gay, NTTAWWT.
One is reminded of butlers in upper class British homes in the Victorian era and first half of the 20th century.
Of course this may be more stereotype than actual fact. But this writer happened to see the Astaire/Rogers vehicle Top Hat the other day, in which Eric Blore plays Astaire’s butler Bates, who famously says “We are Bates,” and has a running gag of referring to himself in the third person. Presumably this was playing on known perceptions of English butlers. (Unless this film created the stereotype from scratch.)
Speaking of the English, the third person “one” construction (“one doesn’t like to blow one’s own horn”) is not uncommon among British speakers and writers.
Of course, Queen Victoria famously said “We are not amused,” suggesting that the Royal “we” may meet the criteria of the OP. Or so we believe.
So perhaps the “stratum of society” Chez is looking for is “The British.”
Rickey Henderson was notorious for doing this - I don’t know if he was the first, but he made it an art. Referring to oneself in the third person is apparently called illeism.
When I say Rickey may have been the first, I meant among professional athletes. He’s been around a long time, but I don’t think he was the first guy to ever refer to himself in the third person.
The Wikipedia entry on illeism is revealing in what it lacks. Which is to say that it fails to mention any strata of society (or groups of people) who commonly and jointly exhibit this particular trait.
