"“We're still figuring out the timing.” There was no we. There was me, a calendar, and a flight I hadn't booked. My partner had nothing to do with it. The trip was for me, alone, to think. And yet there I was, smuggling a phantom committee into a sentence about my own life."
"“We're not sure about that investment.” “We've been thinking about moving.” “We don't really watch much TV anymore.” A whole grammar of borrowed plurality, applied to decisions that were entirely mine. The committee that doesn't exist"
"Most people assume the royal we is a tic of CEOs and politicians, the language of corporate press releases and royal addresses. It isn't. It's also the language of a 44-year-old man telling a friend whether he wants pasta or rice, hedging the answer with a fictional second voter so nobody has to know that he, alone, has a preference."
"I grew up in a working-class family in Melbourne where decisions were never solo. The car was a household decision. The takeaway on Friday night was a household decision. Whether to fix something or replace it was, emphatically, a household decision, and the wrong answer cost real money. The plural pronoun made sense because the consequences were plural."
A person realizes they repeatedly use “we” when making decisions that are entirely their own. A trip they plan alone is described with borrowed plurality, even though no partner is involved. The pattern continues with investments, moving, and daily habits, suggesting a fictional committee inside everyday speech. The “royal we” is framed as more than a public or corporate habit; it can also function as a way to avoid admitting personal desire. Growing up in a working-class household where decisions were shared reinforces collective grammar, even after consequences become individual.
Read at Silicon Canals
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