| 词组 | one |
| 释义 | one 1. The pronoun one, when it stands for a person, is usually the mark of a formal style. In such a context it may refer to a particular kind of individual or it may mean "anyone at all" or it may be used as a substitute for I or me. In the first two examples that follow, a particular kind of individual is referred to; in the third, the meaning seems to be "anyone at all": • One might wish that the book consisted entirely of such fresh and surprising matter —John Updike, New Yorker, 24 May 1982 • In the next few years, one marched in Harlem and elsewhere ... , went on sympathy marches for civil-rights workers who were killed ... —Nora Sayre, Esquire, March 1970 • ... he now seemed to have a new girl friend, the wife of a gangster who was lying in hospital after a shooting affray, a rather dangerous relationship one would have thought —Graham Greene, Getting to Know the General, 1984 The use of one in place of I or me (or one's in place of my) is chiefly British, and it has been objected to by some commentators—mostly American. In the first of these examples, the speaker has been asked if he considers himself an ecumenical person. • Oh yes, very much so. I attended the World Council conferences in New Delhi and Uppsala, and am planning now to go to Nairobi; but it's not only a question of the official level, one's whole ministry has been along ecumenical lines —Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, quoted in The Economist, 29 Mar. 1975 • I would reject a natural lawn even if it made sense in a garden like mine and wouldn't look ... as though one were too slatternly to keep a garden decent —Eleanor Perenyi, Green Thoughts, 1983 In some cases like this, the use of one can broaden beyond I. In the first of the examples that follow, one can easily be taken to mean "you and I"; in the second, "I and others" may be intended: • ... I do not think him so very ill-looking as I did— at least one sees many worse —Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814 • I'm watching this pretty carefully and I hope this issue will come up in the Lords and one may be able to speak about it —Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, quoted in The Economist, 29 Mar. 1975 In some cases, the reader or the person being addressed is clearly one of the particular kind of individual being referred to, and in these cases, one comes close to meaning simply you, but even here, some broadening of view can be discerned. The following example is from a novel written in the second person, and one is clearly meant to be more inclusive than you. • As long as one is at one's desk by ten-thirty, one is relatively safe. Somehow you manage to miss this banker's deadline at least once a week —Jay Mclnerney, Bright Lights, Big City, 1984 At least one book on writing (Trimble 1975) recommends avoiding one and using you when addressing the reader on the grounds that the printed page itself puts enough distance between reader and writer, and that it need not be increased by using more formality. E. B. White agrees, but sees a problem: • As for me, I try to avoid the impersonal "one" but have discovered that it is like a face you keep encountering in the streets and can't always avoid bowing to —letter, 26 Sept. 1963 2. A question that comes up frequently in connection with one is what pronoun to use later in the sentence to refer to it. He, they, and one are all likely candidates, but which one do you choose? This choice has been a matter of contention since the 18th century. It appears that the earliest solution was to use he, him, and his to refer back to a beginning one. Shakespeare did so; Bernstein 1971 and Freeman 1983 both give the same quotation from As You Like It. The OED has an example from the 15th century and says that use of he and his was usual. The practice was attacked by Baker 1770 and by Alford 1866; they both recommended the consistent employment of one, one's, and oneself after one. There has been a great deal of subsequent comment, and a divergence of usage. Since the second half of the 19th century, British usage has tended to follow the consistent use of one. American usage—and American commentators—are divided. British commentators assert that one... he is an American practice, yet some American commentators (Bernstein 1971 and Watt 1967, for instance) recommend following British practice. So Americans do it both ways: • Besides, life is too short for one to waste his time reading any but our best writers —Thomas Meehan, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 14 Aug. 1983 • If one were to take literally all the tales of market coups that one hears over lunch tables, one would be astonished at how often one is asked to split the check — New Yorker, 10 May 1982 • ... one is always paid for one's sins —Flannery O'Connor, letter, 5 May 1956 • And one must be careful not to shoot himself — Stuart Chase, The Tyranny of Words, 1938 Sometimes you can even find one... you: • When one is very old, as I am ... your legs give in before your head does —George Bernard Shaw, quoted in Time, 21 Oct. 1946 The Harper 1975, 1985 panel split nearly evenly on the one ... one, one ... he question, and one panelist offered the suggestion that the use of one... one might be stimulated by the desire to avoid the male chauvinism of one ... he. While some of the other panelists pooh-poohed the idea, the consideration of gender apparently enters into the use of the sequence one ... they, their, them, which, if overlooked by the handbooks, is not missed by the OED. The OED says that the plural pronouns "were formerly in general use on account of their indefiniteness of gender" but that the practice "is now considered ungrammatical." The ungrammaticality here is a violation of formal or grammatical number agreement, and the OED's view is based on the assumption that they, their, them can only be plural (for a discussion of this subject, see they, their, them). Use of they, their, them in singular reference to one dates back to the 17th century and Sir Kenelm Digby (in OED). Some more recent examples are these: • ... shut up in a nasty Scotch jail, where one cannot even get the dirt brushed off their clothes —Sir Walter Scott (in Bolinger 1980) • One could not help coveting the privileges they enjoyed for their sisters —Miss M. B. Edwards, A Winter with the Swallows, 1867 (in Hodgson 1889) • ... one may escape the duty by demonstrating themselves to be a hopeless administrator —Harvard-Radcliffe Parents Newsletter (in New Yorker, 2 Dec. 1985) • What does one do to get to the stage where they can mentally orchestrate like this? —Ted Greene, Guitar Player, August 1981 • If one sees themself in the characters depicted herein, it is strictly a figment of their own imagination —publisher's disclaimer, quoted in Simon 1980 This last example illustrates as well as any the pressures and influences that lead to statements being made with one. First, there is the felt need to make the statement formal and dignified. This may be reinforced generally by the handbooks and usage books, which encourage the use of formal diction. Further, there is an old prejudice against the indefinite you, still repeated in some books (Freeman 1983, for example). You would not expect such a disclaimer to be as breezy as "If you think you are one of the characters in this book, you are imagining things." So one must be used in the interest of dignity. But what of a string of one's in the British fashion? "If one sees oneself in the characters depicted herein, it is strictly a figment of one's own imagination." This is perhaps too starchy for American taste. And for a modern publisher, use of third-person singular masculine pronouns is out, lest sexual bias be alleged. This leaves the his or her formulas a possibility: "If one sees himself or herself in the characters depicted herein, it is strictly a figment of his or her own imagination." In light of these possibilities, the attraction of they, their, them is obvious. By now you may agree with several commentators that the best way out of one of these situations is to throw the whole passage out and start over—maybe the old impersonal formulas like "any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental" did have their uses. And you can see that for the American writer in these cases there is no simple solution: you just have to handle them in the way that sounds best to you. See also one of those who and the various articles at agreement. |
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