This post is mostly intented for plural systems, but I’m open to anyone responding as well, even if you aren’t plural. It’s nice to hear from another perspective outside our community.
When you have more than one selves within the same body, it’s fair to say that the pronoun “I” may not be enough sometimes. After all, if you share your body with more than one selves, some of the things your body does would technically be done by all of your selves.
For example, as a plural system myself, whenever I go anywhere, technically all my headmates (or another selves) will also go with me since we share the same body. If the body goes somewhere, everyone goes along with it. With that, some stuff about us can’t be described with just “I.” Think of how I’ve been using “we,” “us,” and “our” throughout this post.
So, if you’re plural yourself, do you also use plural pronouns the same way we do? When do you use “we” to describe yourself? And when do you use “I” to describe yourself?
For me at least, I usually use singular pronouns for stuff like opinions, since every one of us have differing opinions (even if we share the same body!). For example, I am writing most of this text alone, so I use singular first person.
But, for stuff all of us agree on, stuff written by more than one headmates, or stuff involving multiple headmates, I often use plural pronouns like “we” since it involves more than one of us. I also use we for the more formal stuff. In a way, it’s kind of like using royal/formal we.
Honestly, being more than one in the same body presents a lot of weird and interesting quirks, and this is just one of them.
And, if you’re not plural or don’t understand what’s going on here (that’s understandable), how often do you use royal/formal we to describe yourself? If you’re the sole moderator of a community on lemmy or someplace else, do you use “we” for moderator announcements to sound more formal?
Hi everyone! I unfortunately am not plural, so when I’m alone I’m all alone 😢 BUT! I try not to let that happen too often 😄
You asked if you’re not plural, how often do I use the royal/formal we, and I guess for me personally I would have to say not very often. I don’t use it to describe myself, only when I’m speaking on behalf of an organization, like if I get a technical question at work and I’m the most qualified to speak on how my company does things, that’s where I might say “that not how we usually do XYZ”. But for things specific to my single body, yeah I pretty much always use “I”.
I wasn’t too aware of the plural community before joining Lemmy and seeing lots of new communities, but I am enjoying learning about new people and topics I hadn’t heard of before! I don’t want to violate any rules, so if this is rude of me to ask please forgive me and ignore this question, but I see that there are many instances of a single body housing multiple identities, but is there the opposite? Is it ever the case where one identity is shared between two bodies? I guess I’m curious about the nature of the mind vs the physical world, and was wondering if there was any discussions on whether the identities were tied to the physical body, or if they were somehow external but just “linked” to a body.
Thanks everyone, I wish y’all the best!!