Just a question.

Why does he refer to himself in the third person? Because he's a delusional egomaniac.

I've found this usage to be more common around NJ-NY than elsewhere, but it's something we all do. It's just some people do it in a wider set of contexts.

I speak of "our teachers" instead of "the teachers at my high school." I'm not part of a group that owns those teachers.

My principal (gee, I don't own him, now do I?) speaks of his teachers (and, no, he didn't pay my parents or previous owners for me, either). My kid says "my friends" and "my teachers" all the time. Many speak of "our voters" and "our supporters."

And notice how my "ownership" of "my kid" slid right past your perceptual filters.

It's also not "my" school--it's the school districts and I'm sure that some lawyer in "my district" would take offense at my asserting it's my property.

Obama, even though he doesn't own his cabinet secretaries and other people who work for and report to him, still says things like "my chief of staff" or "my secretary of defense". Neither Kerry nor Carter are his slaves, persons owned by him. Yet nobody much cares that he seems to be asserting title to their persons.

And more than one white DUer must, according to how possessives are parsed sometimes around here, have claimed Obama as his (or her) property: "I'm proud that Obama's my president".

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of petty minds. But a lack of principled consistency--let's call it a foolish inconsistency--is worse. One limits growth; the other at best disallows growth and construction and at worst destroys. In this case, often language often used as the enemy of communication and the servant of ego-building. American political discourse has all reason crowded out by the bloated egos occupying the continent out to the limits of the maritime economic zone--and those are just the egos of Rhode Islanders.


Possessives are squirrelly. Just in what I wrote there's actual possession bleeding into some sort of group affiiliation or known relationship between me and things or people to some sort of vague assertion that I perceive or want there to be an affiliation. In some cases, power relationships can go either way--"my principal" versus his saying "my employee"; surely you don't own your boss as chattel. A lot of people go language-dumb when they have to interpret possessions. Here, as elsewhere, people have to show cooperation in order to successively understand what an utterance is saying and the lack of cooperation or good will leads to some truly abysmal parsings to achieve and maintain their desired level of outrage and indignation.

It's hard to find a lot of commonality cross-linguistically for possessives, as well, or how possession is expressed or what it even includes. Students get inalienable possession in their non-native languages wrong, and the grammaticality violations are jarring. And sorting out "I have a book" meaning either it's in my possession (but I don't own it) versus I own it (but it's not in my possession) is a tough row to hoe.

Last reasonable description I saw of possession is Barker's dissertation (published by CSLI). The diss version can be found at http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Research/barker.dissertation.pdf. I was subjected to a spirited attack on Barker's methodology by a committed and quite possibly insane adherent of Sebeok, but that mostly boiled down to method and not result. I'm sure that since then the field's exploded but I haven't kept up with it.

It isn't limited to the genitive case.

Because your kid is your kid. The school you go to is your school. "My teacher" is your teacher....

You cannot compare that to saying an African American you have never met is "My African American." That a Jewish person across the street is "Your Jew". There is a whole big difference. The school, for instance, is "my school" because your community has created it, maintains it and you, as a community member get to claim it as your school.

You don't get to do that with an African American neighbor... Your argument above is confusing and pretty offensive in many ways. You could say "my neighbor", "my African American neighbor" or "my neighbor who is African American" but I highly recommend you don't say "my African American" unless you mean you own them. Which you don't and your community doesn't...so don't defend it and don't say it.

Sorry, but if I'm a teacher and your parents would be coming in for a meeting if you did that in my class and then defended it with your argument.

It's dehumanizing and unacceptable.

Our possessions are not "us", they are things that we own. And if we own nice things that reflects well on us. Or so we hope.

But the possessive, when used to describe a relationship is generally understood to not reflect actual ownership but that a relationship exists.

Thus your examples of "my" teachers, boss, spouse, children, etc.

I think he thinks that all people in the world, especially perhaps those in minority groups, are his personal possessions!

our AA forum is probably the sanest and most decent part of DU.

Speaking of, when will our good friend 1StrongBlackMan be with us again? He is very much missed.

And controversy

but I am glad to assume this means you're able to discuss butter versus olive oil civilly.

They compliment each other.

Don't fabricate a controversy where none exists.

what would happen if I wandered in there and announced that I wouldn't feed kale to the rabbits. (MsAnthrope, thanks for the heads up. I WON"T be trying this!)

There was apparently a rather nasty dust up over the virtues of copper cookware.

I shit you not.

Every one with half a brain knows cast iron is far superior

Your sanity.

Phew.

The word "MY" implies ownership, doesn't it?