{"id":36377,"date":"2025-09-01T11:33:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T11:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/36377\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T11:33:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T11:33:06","slug":"i-prickle-at-being-categorised-as-the-kind-of-person-who-i-dont-believe-in-kinds-of-person-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/36377\/","title":{"rendered":"I prickle at being categorised as \u2018the kind of person who…\u2019 I don\u2019t believe in kinds of person \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been flying<\/a> again, feeling guilty again, deciding again that living on an island and sometimes working elsewhere makes me not-top of the list of people who should fly less. (But then, who else?) It\u2019s always for work, I think, as if pleasure would burn more jet fuel, as if making money justifies what spending money would not.<\/p>\n

Anyway, on the plane the cabin crew like to say, \u2018On behalf of myself and my colleagues, welcome to London.\u2019 People can use words as they like, and I try to be more curious than critical. \u2018On behalf of myself\u2019 is an interesting circumlocution, often heard in announcements. On who else\u2019s behalf might a person speak? Can it not be taken for granted that to say \u2018I\u2019 is to speak \u2018on behalf of myself\u2019?<\/p>\n

A similar move takes place when someone says, \u2018I\u2019m the kind of person who checks the door three times,\u2019 or, \u2018I\u2019m not the kind of person who gets up at six.\u2019 I\u2019m interested in the impulse to invoke these \u2018kinds of people\u2019. The need for them must be real, or the phrase wouldn\u2019t have acquired currency. It\u2019s as if a tribe is conjured into being: to say, \u2018I check the door three times,\u2019 or, \u2018I get up late,\u2019 is to stand alone in possible neurosis or eccentricity. If there are other compulsive door-checkers, if to check doors compulsively is to join a club, one speaks for a group. Someone who is \u2018not the kind of person who gets up at six\u2019 has at once summoned and rejected the \u2018kind of person\u2019 who does; getting up at six is no longer a personal habit or natural corollary of having small children or going to bed early but an assertion of group identity actively denied by the speaker.<\/p>\n

These fantasy teams or tribes make such statements sound defensive. \u2018On behalf of myself\u2019 is nonsensical syntax, but it summons up a host of selves in an ungrammatical double mirror. I, myself, I on behalf of myself, all sharing responsibility for the welcome or the delay or whatever is being announced. <\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m the kind of person\u2019 gestures towards absent others and also relieves the speaker of ordinary responsibility for ordinary action. I do this because this is the kind of person I am, because I belong to a group, even if the group is only \u2018people who do this\u2019. Like \u2018on behalf of myself\u2019, \u2018I\u2019m the kind of person\u2019 is oddly circular: I\u2019m the kind of person who knits in meetings. What kind of person is that? Oh, you know, the ones who knit in meetings. <\/p>\n

Underneath the loop: I feel vulnerable or uncomfortable but I\u2019m not alone. Other people are like me, even if none of them is here.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m someone who\u2019 is another version. There\u2019s alienation built in, an extra loop in the sentence: I\u2019m someone who likes coffee. Obviously any speaker is someone, so to call oneself someone is again to appear between the mirrors of syntax, endlessly repeating. Most of us, to judge by modern high streets, like coffee, but \u2018someone who\u2019 at once claims fellowship with other coffee drinkers and rejects those who reject coffee. <\/p>\n

I think of Emily Dickinson\u2019s poem I\u2019m Nobody: \u201cHow dreary \u2013 to be \u2013 Somebody!\/How public \u2013 like a Frog \u2013\/ To tell your name \u2013 the livelong June \u2013\/ To an admiring Bog!\u201d<\/p>\n

There is an air of broadcast, of grandiloquence, in these new circumlocutions. The public croaking of Dickinson\u2019s frog can\u2019t but call to mind social media, on which people tell their names the livelong June, amplify and echo themselves, find or invent tribes for good and ill.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0English was never pure or logical. Policing how other people speak is pointless and unattractiveOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s odd anyway to be welcomed to a place by someone who has arrived there at the same moment, when really no one has arrived anywhere because you\u2019re all still on the plane and the plane is still moving, but wouldn\u2019t you feel more welcome if the announcer said, \u2018We welcome you to London\u2019?<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t you feel more friendly towards someone who said, \u2018I like knitting,\u2019 than, \u2018I\u2019m someone who likes knitting\u2019? I prickle at being categorised as \u2018the kind of person who gets up early\u2019 or \u2018the kind of person who doesn\u2019t wear make-up\u2019 or even \u2018the kind of person who writes books\u2019. I don\u2019t believe in kinds of person. I don\u2019t write on behalf of myself. I just write, not to \u2018the kind of person who reads\u2019 but to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have been flying again, feeling guilty again, deciding again that living on an island and sometimes working…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,28286,2212],"class_list":{"0":"post-36377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-sarah-moss","13":"tag-weekendreview"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}