[mea] The great ME vs. MYSELF debate with Jane and her damn coffee
- From: cheri.frazer@xxxxxxxxxx
- To: mea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:36:54 -0600
This has been a fascinating subject, and thanks to R and J for getting it
started!
Sentence: "I made coffee for Jane and me/myself"
[I'm omitting the end period to make it easier to quote samples.]
I consulted with two linguistics professors (one retired, one active), and
the short answer is: you can use either.
Long answer, for those who also love this stuff:
There are two rules that collide in this sentence:
(1) With compound object pronouns, each pronoun in the object should use
the objective form. (In plain English: each half of the sentence needs to
make sense by itself.)
This works great with sentences like "Send invitations to Jane and me"
[Send an invitation to Jane + Send an invitation to me].
(2) If a sentence starts with I and ends with the same person, you have to
use the reflexive (myself), e.g., "I sent the parcel to myself".
When you mix the two rules together, awkwardness results. Both linguists
agree that style trumps rules wherever awkwardness results from a rule,
but the style in this case depends on what your brain hears. Here's what
they both said:
(a) If your brain hears the reflexive then "me" will grate, because you
wouldn't say "I made coffee for me"; therefore, "myself" will be
preferred. But "me" isn't technically wrong in this sentence. One linguist
said that if the sentence were "I made coffee for my mother and me/myself"
then she would choose "myself" because the sound combo is more pleasing.
(b) If your brain hears the preposition "for" then you're probably not
expecting the reflexive to follow, because you wouldn't likely say "I made
coffee for myself" unless you were indicating that you didn't make enough
for two, or that someone else was supposed to make it but you made it
yourself instead, or that you made something different for the other
person. In that case "me" will be preferred, but "myself" isn't
technically wrong in this sentence either. Some might also hear it as a
hypercorrection, as we often hear from restaurant staff with the grating
"...and yourself?" GACK.
Interestingly, each linguist had a different preference, and the editors
who wrote to me offline were split down the middle as well. All were
agreed that Jane is a pain in the ass and should never be invited for
coffee again. (Ok, most indicated that they would recast the sentence to
avoid the awkwardness, which is always a great option.) Thanks to everyone
who weighed in, both on the listserv and off.
-Cheri
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