Nosism - pluralis modestiae and pluraris maiestatis

Nosism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nosism, from the Latin nos, "we", is the practice of using the pronoun "we" to refer to oneself.^[1]

Depending on the person using the nosism different uses can be distinguished:

Contents

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• 1 The royal "we" or majestic plural
• 2 The editorial "we"
• 3 The author's "we" or pluralis modestiae
• 4 The patronizing "we"
• 5 The non-confrontative "we"
• 6 References

The royal "we" or majestic plural[edit]

Main article: Majestic plural

The majestic plural is the use of "we" to refer to a single person holding a high office, such as a monarch, bishop, orpope.

The editorial "we"[edit]

The editorial "we" is a similar phenomenon, in which aneditorial columnist in a newspaper or a similar commentator in another medium refers to themself as wewhen giving their opinion. Here, she or he casts themself in the role of a spokesperson: either for the media institution that employs them, or more generally on behalf of the party or body of citizens who agree with the commentary.

The author's "we" or pluralis modestiae[edit]

Similar to the editorial "we" is the practice common in scientific literature of referring to a generic third person bywe (instead of the more common one or the informal you):

• By adding four and five, we obtain nine.
• We are thus led also to a definition of "time" in physics.– Albert Einstein

"We" in this sense often refers to "the reader and the author," since the author often assumes that the reader knows and agrees with certain principles or previous theorems for the sake of brevity (or, if not, the reader is prompted to look them up).

This practice is also common in philosophy journals and texts, and comments in computer source code.^{[citation needed]}

The patronizing "we"[edit]

The patronizing "we" is sometimes used in addressing instead of "you," suggesting that the addressee is not alone in his or her situation, that "I am with you, we are in this together." This usage is emotionally non-neutral and usually bears a condescending, ironic, praising, or some other connotation, depending on an intonation: "Aren't we looking cute?" This is sometimes employed by health care workers when addressing their patients, e. g. "How are we feeling today?"

The non-confrontative "we"[edit]

In distinction to the patronizing "we" is the non-confrontative "we" used in T-V languages such as Spanish where the phrase ¿Cómo estamos? (literally, "How are we?") is sometimes used to avoid both over-familiarity and over-formality among near-peer acquaintances.