Who and Whom

Who and Whom: a simple example of how the subliminal works in language and of why it's so hard to prove it exists.

Have you ever noticed how, in modern parlance, both on and off the screen, the word "who" is often used for both the subjective and the objective case, i.e., "who did it;" "you did it to who?"; "who do you want?"

Now, in the first sentence, the construction is correct. But in the second two, the correct construction would be "whom." So why is the correct construction so rarely used nowadays, and even when it is, why does that strike even the most highly educated of us as awkward a lot of the time?

Well, common sense combined with a little bit of thought can help us figure this out. When we take into consideration the context of the usage, particularly when applied during intense situations, not only in the movies and so forth, but also often in ordinary daily discourse that involves some serious issue or otherwise emphatic communication: even if correct, the objective form strikes the ear as being too weak.

After all, "who" implies (and gives us a sense of the) active whereas "whom" implies (and gives us a sense of the) passive. And just like most language pundits tell us to choose, whenever we can, the active over the passive tense in our writings and speeches because the active tense is stronger, so, politically speaking, using the word "who" to apply to everyone and anyone indicated in our references to each other generally helps to make everyone involved feel stronger, and therefore perhaps less likely to bristle in anger from a subliminal feeling of being done against as a result. Therefore, in every human situation involving verbal communication where no one wants to feel like “the victim,” as opposed to being the stronger one and more in control--rhetorically, politically, psychologically, etc, if not grammatically, "who” is always preferable to "whom."

Now, I could go on at length with many more examples of this, but I think you get a general idea.

So, why is it--once we have seen clearly that the above arguments make sense--so hard to prove them, and thus have the understanding derived from them become common, if not scientifically established knowledge? Again, in finding a reasonable answer for this, common sense, as well as a little bit of sensitivity as to the way the sound of words works upon our psyches, comes to our aid. The letter m in "whom" softens the effect of the construction, which works fine as long as one has no extracurricular problem sticking to the grammatically sanctioned passive usage, but in real life using it often just makes us feel more vulnerable. And the same fear of vulnerability that creates this ungrammatical yet increasingly much more conventional usage also keeps us from any sort of conscious admission, whether to ourselves or others, of why we so use it.

Not to mention that those who try to correct this from some relatively safe, calm, and/ or peaceful vantage point are often scoffed at by the rest of us.

Ergo, the same fear of vulnerability that creates the normative misuse of the construction also furthers the deniability of that misuse.

So, to make my final and real point here: to just deepen and broaden this sort of syndrome into all the patterns of our language (and arguably any language) use shows you the depth and extent, not only of the often subliminal force of social and environmental factors upon language patterns, but also why it is so difficult to attain acceptance much less scientific proof for its existence.

Lee Strauss (Copyright@2018)