We’re enjoying a resurgence of the conservative talking point claiming that president Obama overuses first-person-singular pronouns, and that this is a reflection of his egotism and self-centeredness. Allegedly, the address he gave to announce the death of Osama Bin Laden was filled with “I”s and “me”s and “my”s. So vain!
Except, as Language Log’s Mark Liberman points out:
There are two problems with this meme. The first problem is that frequency of FPS pronoun use is not in fact correlated with the personality traits that they associate with it (and with Obama). (…) The second problem is that Obama’s empirical frequency of FPSP use is in fact on the low side, when you compare his speeches, press conferences, interviews, etc. to similar performances by other recent presidents.
Unsurprisingly, two ways to be wrong about an issue don’t make a right.
