| 词组 | we |
| 释义 | we 1. The use of we to mean "I" is very old in English. The OED dates such use by sovereigns, sometimes called the "royal we," back to the time of Beowulf, and includes citations from Henry VI, James I, and Charles I. A famous example of the royal we is Queen Victoria's "We are not amused." Just as old—or perhaps a bit older—is the use known nowadays as the "editorial we," which the OED also traces back to before 1000. The editorial we gets its name from its use in newspaper editorials, in which it is meant to imply that a collective rather than an individual opinion is being expressed. More generally, it typically serves to give a less personal tone to the writing in which it occurs. (Its use for this purpose in academic papers is noted by Robin Lakoff in Language and Women's Place, 1975; she terms it the "academic-authorial we") Its occasional use in casual prose tends to have something of a playful quality, perhaps with overtones of the royal we: • It is just as well I didn't sign this letter..., for in the interval since I wrote the last paragraphs, we have had a flood of letters ..., entirely restoring our good humor —Alexander Woollcott, letter, October 1917 The casual editorial we is well known to readers of the New Yorker magazine, in which it was long ago adopted as a stylistic mannerism. A good idea of its quality can be gained from the following examples, taken from a single issue: • ... the following Sunday evening, we called him up and asked if we might talk with him —New Yorker, 2 May 1988 • An hour later, when we were in the front seat of a cab heading crosstown and Matt and his cello were riding in the back, we turned around and asked if he could tell us about his instrument —New Yorker, 2 May 1988 • We couldn't resist asking His Royal Highness what he thought of the architectural pronunciamentos of his cousin Prince Charles —New Yorker, 2 May 1988 We can also indicate that the speaker or writer identifies himself or herself with a group (in this example, referred to by a generic singular, architect): • ... his view of how an architect works is more romantic than accurate. He thinks we jump out of bed in the morning and design any pretty building that happens to enter our heads —The Duke of Gloucester, quoted in New Yorker, 2 May 1988 There are in addition a couple of oral uses of we—not much found in writing—that receive occasional mention by commentators. These are characterized by Per-rin & Ebbitt 1972 as "the kindergarten we (We won't lose our mittens, will we?)" and "the hospital we (How are we feeling this morning?)". These various uses of we should not be cause for concern. Consider that the New Yorker has been using we for a half century or better, and making it sound sophisticated. All you really need worry about is its appropriateness to the piece you are writing; there is nothing wrong in the we itself. 2. The OED, with typical thoroughness, devotes a whole numbered sense of we to its uses in place of us; the earliest example comes from the dawn of the 16th century. The OED assures us that we for us is now heard only from the uneducated. It is certainly to be found in the speech of the fictional uneducated: • What makes we New Yorkers sore is to think they should try and wish a law like that on us —Ring Lardner, The Big Town, 1921 But we also have some evidence of its use by the educated. The writer of the next example is noted on our citation as the literary editor of a prestigious British newspaper: • ... at that time in the faculty of English was J. R. R. Tolkien; he was equally at the disposal of we cadets —Anthony Curtis, British Book News, June 1977 Note that in these examples we turns up hard by an appositive ("we New Yorkers"). Most of our evidence for the accusative we shows it occurring with appositives. In some dialects of English, we has captured even more ground. A calypso by Lord Kitchener has this line, quoted in the Trinidad Guardian, 29 Jan. 1975: "Give we back we stadium." It will probably be quite some time before mainstream American and British English reach that level of caselessness. |
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