Column was a political correctness tirade

When writing her biweekly column, "Girl in the Mirror," Bernadette McHenry must have found herself with little to say (The Daily Targum, Oct. 19). That is the only explanation I can offer to explain her commentary on the possessive pronoun and its misrepresentations of the English language. For McHenry, who claims that "the short step from language to painful reality is not obvious, but it is undeniable," the step between reading a sentence and understanding it, is, apparently, a monumental one.

On a very simple level, most people understand that when they introduce their friend "Kim" as "my friend," the possessive "my" qualifies the "friend," not the "Kim." To state simply: The friendship is yours, but not the individual. This same basic rule applies to all of her examples: "My son," "My girlfriend," etc. The relationship binds the two together, and you are giving yourself to that relationship as much as you are asking from that other person. This is assuming it is a healthy relationship.

McHenry's claims appear to me to be based on all sorts of assumptions: ideological, cultural and psychological. These assumptions make her believe that the use of the possessive reveals more than it actually does about the speaker. The possessive does not always indicate the kind of domination that McHenry suggests it does. The construction of the misguided couple "Jack and Jill," whose troubles are caused by the "depersonalization" of the possessive pronoun, oversimplifies larger issues into a neat, little, politically correct package. It's an assault on the imagination! If pronouns did all that, I wonder what adjectives are responsible for!

Ludwig Wittgenstein once advised, "It is misleading even to attempt to fix the meaning of particular expressions by linking them referentially to things in the world. The meaning of a word or phrase or proposition is nothing other than the set of (informal) rules governing the use of the expression in actual life."

We want words to represent things that they cannot express. We know that if we want to change things, the first thing to do is change our words. We, as a society, should not advocate words of pain, but rather words of change. These words will reflect our hearts.

At the same time, we shouldn't suffocate ourselves with a fear of language. Whenever we communicate, we acknowledge the things not said as much as the things said. We do not do that by starting politically correct witch hunts for the "flavors of the month" that we think are attacking our sacred liberties. Today, it's the possessive pronoun, tomorrow, it's dependent clauses! When will the madness end?

Vijay Ramanathan is a Livingston College senior majoring in English.