At the VC, Eugene has an interesting post about whether “the number of ‘I”s in some speech are a proxy for narcissism or some such.” He suggests that the answer is no. The particular controversy at issue is whether folks like George Will are grasping at straws when they accuse the President of narcissism for using the first person singular too often in his speeches, and so naturally the comments section degenerates a little. But I’d like to shift the focus. Anyone who toils in the law review field has faced the situation of having a draft article returned with all the “I”‘s changed to “the author,” or with the offending sentence either rewritten quite well (this is more the exception than the rule) or, more often, reworked in a way that gives a bad name to the phrase “passive voice” — “it is submitted that,” and so on. Either because of preexisting conventions or because student authors have less bargaining power with editors, this kind of passive-voice avoidance of the word “I” is especially endemic in student pieces.
How should we feel about this? I ask in part because I am currently at work on a book, and I’m not being too shy about using the first person singular. After all, I’m stating my views, not always pretending to offer a definitive statement about the fact of the matter. On the other hand, I cannot help but notice, in reading the many books that have gone into my own work, the impressively authoritative nature of writing that makes an argument directly and without fussing with the first person at all, while still avoiding the execrable “it is submitted”-type language.
It seems to me we can distinguish between at least three kinds of “authoritativeness” here. There is phony authoritativeness: that is, there are cases in which the author deliberately adopts what sounds like an authoritative voice without sufficient support for that authority, and so comes off as a kind of thief of credibility. A good deal of passive-voice writing in the law reviews, I think, meets that description. In those cases, we would usually be better off if the author were more candid in using “I” rather than pretending that he or she is offering the gospel truth. Then there is false authoritativeness: that is, writing in which the author has some claim to authoritativeness and does not come off as borrowing credibility in a transparently phony manner, but in which honesty and humility should have compelled the author to admit that his or her statement is an opinion that should not be taken as fact. In that sense, and somewhat contrary to the view that “I” is evidence of narcissism, sometimes using the first person singular can amount to taking responsibility for one’s own views without trying to borrow any undeserved authority, and thus can be humbler than avoiding the first person altogether.
Finally, there is a third category: genuine and deserved authority, writing that is strongly assertive but, for one reason or another, comes off as having and deserving authority, as making serious points but not making overly tendentious arguments while treating them as unquestionable. I would like my own writing to fall more into this category — although I’m not sure I possess genuine and deserved authority! But I am certain that failing this, I would rather use the first person singular than make a statement that is plainly arguable while shaping the language in such a way as to mislead readers into thinking it is more authoritative than it is. In any event, I hope we can all agree that the obsessive and neurotic drive on the part of some law review editors to eliminate the first person singular in favor of passive-voiced constructions that torture the English language is a bad idea.
Posted by Paul Horwitz on February 12, 2010 at 01:30 PM
Comments
I prefer using “we,” not in a regal sense, but in the sense that the reader and I are sharing a discussion. Of course, this presumes, vainly (or in vain), that there is a reader.
Posted by: Mark D. White | Feb 14, 2010 6:12:05 AM
Former LR Editor: This article thinks the problem does not go away.
Posted by: Paul Horwitz | Feb 13, 2010 3:47:23 PM
I would also like to suggest (there — I tried working in both an “I” and a mealymouthed passive construction!) that part of the problem is one of context. As Rick notes, audience matters. So, too, does context. Perhaps most important, too many writers don’t understand that “passive verb construction” is not the same thing as “passive voice”…
When suggesting that traditional interpretations of meme x are incorrect, it probably matters more whether the argument is “only Humpty Dumpty could possibly accept meme x, because even a cursory reading of the source material rejects it,” or “despite meme x’s longstanding acceptance, a careful reading of the source materials demonstrates that it was nothing more than dictum, not part of the holding — despite its later acceptance as black-letter law by virtually every court.” The first possibility implies a first-person or impersonal construction; the second possibility implies a first-person, or perhaps a third-person inclusive, construction, but probably not an impersonal construction (unless, that is, it’s a study in the history of a corrupt meme!).
Posted by: C.E. Petit | Feb 13, 2010 11:39:18 AM
Replace “I” with “This article” or “this piece” — and the problem goes away?
Posted by: Former LR Editor | Feb 12, 2010 2:40:38 PM
One solution, of course, is to replace all the I’s with royal we’s.
[Grammar question: are apostrophes appropriate in the preceding sentence?]
Part of the disconnect may come from the difference between the legal academy and legal practice. If I’m writing a brief to a court, I would never use “I”, because I want to convince the court that the point I am making is not just my own, but has some weight of legal authority behind it. In academic writing, however, I’d often like to do the opposite — to demonstrate that the point I’m making is a novel one.
Posted by: Rick Bales | Feb 12, 2010 2:12:30 PM
Paul, wonderful post. What do you think of the substitution of “this article” or “this paper” for “I”? I’ve always been taught that one shouldn’t use “I” but that these other constructions are preferable to “it will be seen” and the like. Perhaps that advice gets old as well after a while, since a book or an article really can’t make an argument. I like to use “I” once in a while — e.g., when there is some special reason that I am interested in signaling that I’m less confident about a position I’ve staked out. But then, I also like to begin my sentences with “But” and “And” — syntactical choices which I know are taboo — and I am mildly miffed when they are changed to “However,” or “Moreover,” which I’ve always found fussy and forced.
Posted by: Marc DeGirolami | Feb 12, 2010 2:02:14 PM