If you tune in to news programs, political speeches, or academic lectures, you’ll start to notice a trend: the misuse of the reflexive pronoun myself. This grammatical misstep is likely a result of hypercorrection; in other words, people are changing something that is right to something that is wrong because the right word doesn’t seem correct. Here are some examples:
If you ever want to see your kid again, please send $3 million to either my sister or myself.
Darth Vader and myself have decided to join the dark side of the Force.
If you’ve ever said anything like the above, you should first be arrested…and then properly instructed on the uses of myself! Myself is a reflexive pronoun, just like yourself, yourselves, ourselves, themselves, himself, herself, and itself. Whenever we make a decision to use one of these reflexive pronouns, we must ask ourselves (look, I used one!) a couple questions:
- Is this reflexive pronoun in object position?
- Is the subject and object in my sentence the same person (or people)?
- If the reflexive pronoun is not in object position, does it at least match the subject and is it being used for emphasis?
We’ll try this out with a couple of examples:
- This pizza is so good I hate myself.
Myself is in object position. Check! The subject is I. I and myself match, so check again! We have correct usage here.
- Get over yourself!
Yourself is in object position. Check! The subject is…nothing? No! This is a command (imperative), so the hidden subject is actually you. You = myself. It works!
- She oversaw the completion of the project herself.
Herself is…no…it’s not the object. But wait! That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Does herself match the subject she? Why yes, it does! Check for that. Is herself being added to emphasize that she did the action alone? Yes, it is. So we’re good. Note that if we remove herself, the sentence still works, though less focus is placed on the fact that the subject did the action singlehandedly. In this case, herself is actually acting as an intensive pronoun, which carries the same form as the reflexive pronoun…but don’t worry yourself about that.
Well, that’s about it! So the next time you are tempted to talk about yourself by saying myself, ask yourself those questions. Remember: We never find myself in subject position. We never find myself without a matching “friend” in the sentence. And now you know something that lots of smart people don’t!
August 03, 2014
