The infamous “you”

The “red scare” of the seventeenth century were – the Quakers because they insisted on addressing everybody equally as thou and refused to use the then more respectful you for individuals of higher rank. Relics of this old respectful you are even today common in very formal salutations such as “Your Majesty,” “Your Highness” or “Your Grace.” While for example the French, despite their revolution against the aristocracy and for liberté, egalité, and fraternité, still make this clear distinction between formal and informal greeting, modern English speakers have all turned Quaker. We use you for everybody, from our family members to the president. Malcolm Gladwell considers this a unique benefit of the English language since it diminishes power-distance. He illustrates this with the story of the jinxed Korean Airline. The American consultant in charge of restructuring this ailing airline required those who “wanted to remain a pilot at the company … to be fluent in” English because “in English, they would be free of the sharply defined gradients of Korean hierarchy.” According to Gladwell, the story of KA “is an extraordinarily liberating example” of “making successes out of the unsuccessful” by taking “them out of their culture and re-norm them” (Outliers 219-220).

One may question whether “re-norming” is liberating or conforming. One may at the same time contest that the French are more polite simply because they have a formal way of addressing a stranger or an authority. Yet, even in English you is appropriate in formal writing only when giving directions or advice. Beyond that, writers should avoid this pronoun because it may pique the reader. A writer, for example, may explain subprime loans and the advantage of their lower initial interest rate. However, she then declares that your initial advantage only lured you into a dangerously risky financial situation because the inevitable annual adjustments will cost you in the end much more than a traditional loan. Using you, the writer forces the reader to identify with the subprime borrower, something not everybody may appreciate.

I am not you

The author of the NYT times article “Floating In the Digital Experience” (1/3/10) Manohla Dargis explains how “Avatar” has brought back the social experience of watching a movie together “after a decade when watching movies became an increasingly solitary affair, something between you and your laptop.” The reader rightfully may refuse to be depicted as one who watches movies cloistered in her bedroom. It is also an assumption that “Avatar” “forces you to remain attentively in your seat … and locks you in tightly.” What if it didn’t? What if the reader is just this one person who left the theater in the middle of the movie?

Using you in writing implies assumptions about the reader. However, when it is haphazardly mixed with we and I, the writer either lacks grammatical awareness or overindulges in poetic license for effect, however now clearly forces the reader to identify not only with the imaginary “you” but also with the author herself. “We now live in a world of the 24-Hour Movie, one that plays anytime and anywhere you want (and sometimes whether you want it to or not). It’s a movie we can access at home by pressing a few buttons on the remote (and agreeing to pay more for it than you might at the local video store).” WE agree to pay more than YOU might at Blockbusters? Watching “The Dark Knight,” Manohla Dargis felt “that I was at the very edge of the screen. ‘Avatar’ … blurs that edge, closing the space between you and the screen even more.” I/Manohla was on the edge of the screen, but 3D technology sucks YOU/the reader into it? “Mr. Cameron seems to want to invite you into the digital world he has created even if, like a film director, he wants to determine your route.” Yes, a movie director’s goal clearly is to capture the viewer and lead her along a path she herself might not have chosen, but a movie critic should refrain from directing. Even though movie aficionados certainly have a lot in common, they also have their individual preferences. Not everyone who is a movie enthusiast must necessarily be enthused by “Avatar.” Which brings us back to the initial discussion of respect. In spoken English, you may have a democratizing capacity, but in writing it blurs the line between the writer's and the reader's opinion.
Anyway, whoever yearns for a solitary affair with his or her laptop might want to check out this documentary: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492506/