Pronouns of Address and Social Negotiation in as You Like it

Abstract

None of the extant approaches to Early Modern English you and thou can satisfactorily account for all types of pronominal shift present in Shakespeare's plays. The difficulty often lies in swift changes of pronoun performed by one speaker while addressing the same hearer, sometimes in the course of the same dramatic scene or even within the same conversational turn. In this article, some landmarks in the study of the pronouns of address — Brown and Gilman (1960), McIntosh (1963), Wales (1983) — are briefly discussed before concentrating on some of the problems posed by Celia's and Rosalind's shifts of pronominal choice in As you like it. McIntosh's analysis of you and thou in this play is questioned, and the shortcomings of approaches in terms of the norm/deviation or marked/unmarked dichotomies lead to the conclusion that the pronouns of address in Early Modern English must have fulfilled other functions beside those of conveying ‘expressive’ or ‘attitudinal’ overtones. Finally, it is suggested that you and thou might have functioned as markers of in-group or out-group relations in the negotiation of social identities, and as discourse markers signalling a change of conversational topic and the presence of a boundary in the structure of the dialogue.

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