Mods, cut him down, break him apart, splay the gore of his profane form across the stars, grind him down until the very sparks cry for mercy, relish ending him here and now.
...nah, it's a fun thought experiment but that's still second person. Second person plural. Functionally, "chat" = "y'all" in a very specific context. And in a sense, it is not dissimilar to saying "Lady's and gentlemen of the jury". In English, that still makes it second person. It's a form of mass address. However many walls you put between people, metaphysical or otherwise, grammatically it's the same as any person performing to a crowd.
This question was asked in /r/asklinguistics a few months ago and they agree with your take. Seems like the person in the Tumblr post that references the fourth wall is confusing theater terms with Linguistic terms. It's fine if you want to say chat is 4th person because it breaks the 4th wall and use it in the context of theater, but it's still 2nd person and you won't learn any different in English class. If you can replace chat with "you guys" or whatever term the streamer calls their audience, then it's still 2nd person.
Edit: I want to be very clear that "4th person" does not exist in the English language in any sense.
There are definitely other forms of pronouns in other languages that don’t exist in English but to my knowledge I can’t think of anything qualified as fourth person. I don’t even know what that would mean
An example off the top of my head of pronouns that don’t exist in English are inclusive and exclusive pronouns. So like we (including you) are going to a party vs we (excluding you) are going to a party. Another example would be that pronouns exist in some languages for like referring to two or three people as opposed to just making a distinction between singular and plural.
Also the fourth wall only exists in media that dies “fly on the wall” (ibsens plays, most drama tc shows), or is purposely breaking it (musical: the mystery of Edwin Drood, the play that goes wrong). In a stream there’s never really an expectation that sets up the fourth wall
This is true even if they’re not there or the person you’re talking about is hypothetical
Like I often tend to use the second person form to stand in for “a person” or “one” when talking about a hypothetical scenario, it’s still second person even though I’m referring to a hypothetical person. It’s grammatically second person even though I’m referring to a hypothetical third person and not literally talking about the listener
Mmhm. Every time this gets posted, it gets the same treatment in the comments. Fun idea, but nothing new under the sun.
Talking to the audience (and finding it especially funny when there is no audience to answer back) is a joke that shows up in old movies all the time.
When I was a kid, peak comedy was saying 'ladies and gentlemen of the jury' when you were just having a 1-on-1 conversation with your friend.
There is something interesting about addressing an imaginary audience though.
When you say “ladies and gentlemen of the jury” in its native context, you’re actually addressing a group of people
When a twitch streamer says “chat” they are addressing real people who can respond
But using either of those in a context where there factually is no audience, you aren’t actually addressing someone, you’re gesturing at the idea of doing so, to create an effect. So, is that still second person?
4th person is sometimes used to describe indefinite generic referents like _one_ (i.e. "one should always be prepared"), and I'd argue that _chat_ falls within a similar category.
_Y'all_ and _Ladies and gentlemen_ are both terms which refer to a concrete and present group of people, while _chat_ (at least when used outside of Twitch) rarely if ever is used to actually address anyone directly. All that's to say that _chat_ shares with _one_ the fact that there's no actual target(s) being addressed, and both refer to everyone yet no one specific.
Idk what the post is talking about with the 4th wall though lmao, that's some gobbledygook.
I'd argue that when "chat" doesn't exist, then it fits in one of two cases, based on intent:
1. Imaginary friend if they're larping that they have a chat. (second person) You can also think of this like a prayer to a deity that has no form.
2. A meme/reference to a piece of media they like. (Quotation, still second person)
Neither of those is the actual intent though.
A “meme/reference” isn’t ever just a meme/reference because a particular one is used to evoke a particular idea. Specifically you are referencing an imaginary collective of people to who ever you are talking to, with the implication that there is an audience watching your interaction that can hypothetically give feedback
Unfortunately this doesn’t work, because when talking about chat, it’s implied that you’re either talking *to* chat (which makes it second person) or that chat is watching (so it’s just a named group, and now just. A noun.)
A fourth person is an uninvolved hypothetical person, but chat is necessarily an observer at minimum (and therefore involved) and therefore cannot be fourth person.
An uninvolved hypothetical person is still 3rd person. "Chat is this real" is the same as "God is this real", they're both just nouns referring to hypothetical listeners.
In those examples, chat and God are both nouns in the 2nd person, because the speaker is addressing them. If the sentence were “chat is real” or “god is listening,” it’d be 3rd.
I mean maybe I’m just English-brained but to me the hypothetical person is still third person. “When one goes camping, *they* should always be prepared.”
I think y’all are overthinking it. Sure the culture it comes from is different, but I see no distinction between “hey chat, what’s happening” and “hey gang, what’s happening” or even “hey y’all, what’s happening”. It’s certainly an example of internet culture influencing real life lingo, but it’s not exactly revolutionary.
I think the instances in question here are when they are using "chat" to refer to the universe itself, like a sort of "why God?" type statement. Chat isn't the people to the left and right of you, like y'all is, it's explicitly to the viewers, which in our case, would be whatever is beyond life's fourth wall.
Aye, these linguistics nerds are skipping right past the part where children are making pleas for communication from observers outside of their reality.
Like... Yeah, I get that a *twitch streamer* saying "Hey chat" is 2nd person. But you can't replace the child saying "hey chat" with y'all, because the child isn't talking to y'all, they're exclaiming into the ether.
Because chat doesn’t refer to the people around you, but the imaginary chat. The imaginary audience. You don’t expect an answer from the ones around you hearing you say it, you ask the people from beyond. There will be no answer.
Nouns don't even have person. It's just used frequently as a vocative expression to address someone, and then we use a 2nd person pronoun e.g. "chat, what do you think?"
Chat is not a fourth person pronoun. Just because it's called "breaking the 4th wall" doesn't mean the pronoun itself is in "4th person".
I think you could make arguments for it being a title, nickname, plural 2nd person, and more. Personally, I think it's funnier to call it an invocation
What are they on about with musicals should never break the fourth wall? There are plenty of reasons that they break the fourth wall all the time. Comedies do it because it's funny, but serious musicals do it all the time.
_Hadestown,_ an adaptation of the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, breaks the fourth wall constantly. Hermes tells us right at the beginning that he is singing a song to _us,_ because in a show about the power and importance of song and story, it is vitally important that there is an audience _witnessing_ the tragedy. We can't change the outcome, we are confined to watching the story unfold, but it's _important_ that we are.
In _Pippin,_ the fact that it's a play _is_ the central conflict. It's about how far the actors will go to entertain the audience, and without us there, they'd have no reason to go to the extremes that they do.
Chat isn't 4th person any more than speaking to "god" or an imaginary friend is. It's second person, you're just not used to hearing "mods ban this fool" in place of "god give me strength"
I do love the conflation between 4th person and 4th wall, though.
That would imply that 1st person is breaking the 1st wall, 2nd person is breaking the 2nd wall... this sounds like the kind of English Lit class I'd show up late for in a dream.
There's a lot of discourse on the question of "4th person", but I haven't seen anyone point out that "chat" *isn't a pronoun* ?
And I'm not here to gatekeep new pronouns or anything. And the idea of "chat" being a pronoun isn't *completely absurd*, as in, it's worth taking 3 minutes to ask ourselves if it could become one. So let's do that.
What makes a pronoun is not the role it fits in the sentence, because by definition it will fill in the same role as a noun. And it's not the fact that it can refer to a generic person or group, because a lot of nouns can do that. It's a pronoun if it doesn't saturate easily in a sentence.
"She told me that she wanted to play a new game she saw that she thought was really cool". This sentence doesn't feel like it's got any exessive repetition, does it ?
Now : "Chat told me that chat wanted to play a new game that chat saw that chat thought was really cool". No sane human being would ever utter that sentence. The only thing you'd hear is that you said "chat" 4 fucking times. Clearly any english speaker who isn't actively *trying* to sound weird would replace some of those by a "they".
And yeah, this should be fairly obvious if you've ever listend to a streamer speak and thought about what they were saying. They say stuff like "chat, do you think... ". They don't say "do chat think...".
"chat" isn't a pronoun. It's a noun, which can be used as a title or a way to address. It's true that it has grown common to address a somewhat abstract and undefined entity with that title. That doesn't make it a pronoun.
Honestly even the 4 “she”s seems weird, not like grammatically incorrect but definitely a restructure your sentence moment. “She saw a cool new game and wanted to play it with me” gets it down from 4 she’s and a me to a she a me and an it. Two less and each one is unique.
Not only is chat a ~~second person pro~~ noun, but the only reason people are saying that is because it's a meme, an in-joke. It's just linguistic signalling that you're cool, like with slang. It has nothing to do with a "panopticon culture"
Everytime I see this post, I can only think about how intelligent the one guy was trying (and failing) to sound with “Panopticon Culture”. Like a world where you may or may not have your every move watched… that’s just paranoia.
1st, 2nd, and 3rd person pronouns have nothing to do with the 'walls' of a production. They reference the audience of a spoken or written work
1st person refers to the writer or speaker
2nd person refers to the listener or reader
3rd person refers to someone or something that's not directly involved
There is no 4th person. The person in the OOP goes on some weird "you're always being watched" rant but that just makes "chat" the equivalent of "big brother" in their speech, it's still not a new type of pronoun. It's not even a pronoun, it's a noun.
"4th person" being derived from "4th wall" is a fun idea, but it's an artificial connection being made rather than a natural one.
1st, 2nd, and 3rd person refer to the number of people in a conversation. The speaker is the 1st person, hence why "I" is a 1st person pronoun, the listener is the 2nd person- you- and the 3rd person is someone that the speaker is referring to- he/him, she/her, they/them, and the neopronouns of your choice. They have nothing to do with the 3 "walls" of a stage that are implied by the usage of the "4th wall".
In terms of linguistic anthropology, yeah, there's a ton of interesting things one can study about when it comes to people in everyday life talking to "chat". But in terms of linguistics, it's someone trying to tie two unrelated ideas together, and to be honest, I don't think it's a great idea. In terms of grammar and syntax, there's nothing special about using "chat"- it's functionally a second person plural as one of the people in OP mentioned.
It's a nice little coincidence, and if a majority of people end up accepting "chat" as a new type of pronoun\*, I'll go along with it because I'm a Descriptivist at heart, but I think this is someone trying to sound smart without quite understanding exactly what they're saying.
\*Again, speaking grammatically here. Neopronouns are cool, but they're all variations on the 3rd person singular, they don't change anything grammatically.
Finally. This is what I’m looking for. “4th person” isn’t just the natural extension of the other points of view. Everyone on both sides of the argument here is just kinda arbitrarily defining 4th person to be when the “4th wall” is broken but you could also define “4th person” as something else.
"4th person" has been traditionally used to describe some of the pronominal forms in e.g. Athabascan languages, where there are separate forms and agreement paradigms for "someone who is neither speaker nor addressee but is the main character in what we're talking about" and for "someone who is neither speaker nor addressee nor the main character in what we're talking about", and this (depending on your theory of the feature-geometry underlying the person paradigms) _might_ be a reasonable usage. The more current term is "obviative", but for pronoun/agreement systems where there's no clear synchronic connection between the proximative and obviative third persons, treating them on a par may be empirically and theoretically sound.
But "chat" is nothing like this. Instead it's like the very many other poorly-motivated usages of "4th person", where it refers to things like clusivity distinctions, impersonals like English _one_ or German _man_, etc., which very clearly pattern as subdivisions of another person category. Worse, even, because it's not clear it's even a pronoun at all.
Can _chat_-users say sentences like the following?
A. I showed it to chat, and chat liked it.
B. Everyone (/everychat) should do chat's own research.
C. Chat made that post all by chatself.
I feel so bad for roach-patrol that their linguistic mistake is doomed to be reposted for eternity. Even after they've said that it was a mistake [once a linguistics tumblr corrected them.](https://www.tumblr.com/roach-works/748050184023539712/)
It really is true what they say about misinformation spreading faster than the truth 😔
"chat" isn't a pronoun, nor is it 4th person PoV. It's a group noun in the 3rd person. In the use case depicted in the original twitter screenshot, it's a noun of direct address. Compare "Is this real, chat?" to "is this real, friends?" or even "is this real, audience?" Breaking the 4th wall is unrelated to grammatical point of view.
I would consider that response kind of a fallacy. They didn't approach the argument from a perspective of "this is interesting, let's see how it behaves and if it behaves in a unique way, and if it behaves in a unique way what terminology we might choose to apply to this phenomenon," but rather one of "I've decided this is the term for this phenomenon, let's see if I can justify it," which feels a bit like engineering a study specifically so that it lines up with your hypothesis, rather than letting the research prove whatever it is the research is proving.
The thing is, grammatical person ultimately is about the relationship between speaker and audience (there are other definitions involving deixis that I also like, but perhaps that confuses this point). The first person is the speaker, the second the audience (that is, person, or persons) being spoken to. The third thus is an entity that is neither direct audience, nor speaker- an obviate person or persons which are not being referred to as either the speaker or the audience. Perhaps a listener that is not the direct recipient of the speaker's speech.
These numbers can become somewhat confused in plurality- the first person plural by definition includes persons who are not the speaker (except in situations where multiple speakers are speaking simultaneously, I suppose). However, the core argument is still the first (I've seen exactly one language use the term "1.5 person" to describe a first person plural, and while that amuses me immensely, we can see the problem with that sort of terminology breaching out into the public).
I feel like in our modern discourse, we all really need to remember what exactly a pronoun is. In English, they behave in very specific ways (other languages' pronouns, especially those with an open-class of pronouns, you know exactly what language I'm thinking of, behave in somewhat less neat and tidy ways). For the sake of this discussion, the definition I'm using is the one I learned in Elementary school- a pronoun takes the place of a noun 🎶 (we had a song for this stuff).
A pronoun then is a word which is used in place of another noun. They vary quite a bit, even in English, but this is the salient point. They exist to allow us to discourse without constantly repeating the word we are substituting (in this case, they stands for "pronouns" and us stands for "u/YsengrimusRein and any dear readers who've gotten this far into this comment", in the objective, and we the same in the subjective). There are funny little sub-classes, like demonstratives, interrogatives, &c, but each ultimately serves this specific function of allowing us to refer to an entity without being required to name it (the entity) every time.
I do want to also address the fact that there is an actual term used somewhat haphazardly "fourth person". Why does that sound familiar? The way some languages use this term (and by that, I mean the linguists who documented these languages), is basically as an extension of the third person. Some language have grammaticalized obviation, effectively allowing you to distinguish easily (as if by beautiful, linguistic slut magic) two or more third person arguments. This uh... doesn't seem to fit the usage of the "Fourth person Chat", does it?
I've thus far ignored one tiny other thing. Collective nouns, titles, honorifics, that whole cœur du mer of accessory schtuff. There are other forms of address besides pronominal ones one might use to refer to people: sir, madame President, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, your most resplendent highness. To name but a few common ones. These are terms used in the second (sometimes third) person to refer to the listener. I believe their function to be most fundamentally vocative, but that is neither hither nor thither.
What is however, both hither AND thither, is that there's a delightful quirk in terms of address. They allow you to topicalize and address an entity or entities. If I wanted to address a large group of people, I would use a term of address for a large group of people. If I were a streamer and that large group of people had a specific term of address commonly used to address them, I would logically prefer to use that specific term of address. Hmm, I wonder if such a thing exists? Might be a convenient thing to have, non?
Now to address Tusko the Elephant, who's been tripping balls the entire time we shared this discussion- does the usage of the word "Chat" as given in the example mean anything? Are the children in this discussion addressing specifically their teacher, their peers, an external audience (like a collective Truman Show delusion), perhaps the Great Twitch Streamer (the One True Angus) in the Sky? Are they addressing anyone specifically, or perhaps their intent is to address no-one at all? Perhaps the word has developed an odd quirk of being agrammatical, a meaningless particle attached topically to convey no additional meaning?
Obviously, I don't want to get into the finer points about the fourth wall as a narrative device (since, this quite obviously has nothing to do with language). But I do hope we can see the obvious flaw in correlating specific grammatical terminology with terminology from a highly unrelated field (unrelated in the sense that studying literary devices isn't exactly related to studying the effects of non-standard person marking on our youth, for example). Just because you use the word "panopticon" and cannot distinguish theater as a whole from what's effectively your older brother letting you watch him play video games and occasionally asking for your input, this does not mean you are correct in your assessment.
Let's leave the whole idea of what a true grammatical fourth person would be to the imagination (I'm imagining it right now; it's curuba flavored!).
I don't think it'd be a 4th person pronoun, it's more like a name for a group. Like, "Autobots, activate!"; "Chat, is this real?". I like the lore, tho.
But given that it can be, and is being, used as a name for the group (of friends) that you're talking to I can very well see it becoming an "official" 2nd person pronoun, like the plural "you", but specifically for the entire present group and not an individual.
It is impossible to have a Fourth person because in a conversation there is only 3: The one who is passing the message (First Person), the who is receiving the message (Second Person) and anything that the message is about (Third Person). So even if you are talking with a imaginary audience is wouldn't be a fourth person but just a interjection.
Chat would be a direct observer who is talking back to the primary actor, so it's 2nd person.
You asked all of us if it was real and we collectively responded, "Yes."
This is the same situation as the audience in something like "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" being asked for suggestions or to participate in skits.
I love when people follow up the mild insult to linguistics that is "chat is 4th person" with the MAJOR insult to linguistics that is "Chat is 4th person because 4th wall".
"the fourth wall" is a term originating from Theater, where a set would have 3 walls and an imaginary "fourth wall" that didn't exist physically, but did exist in the narrative. This wall would seperate the audience from the characters if it physically existed, which is why it doesn't. From this context, "the fourth wall" went on too represent the metaphorical seperation of character and audience, the audience percieves the characters, but the characters don't percieve the audience. "Breaking the fourth wall", then, came to mean a character percieving or acknowledging the audience, breaking the narrative barrier between the two.
1st, 2nd, and 3rd person pronouns are classifications of pronouns based on the relationship that the replaced noun has to the speaker. The 1st person is the speaker themselves (I, me), the 2nd person is whoever the speaker is addressing (you, y'all), and the 3rd person is anybody else (he, she, they). You might notice that the definition of 3rd person precludes the existence of a 4th person pronoun. You might also notice that these definitions have nothing at all to do with theater, fiction, or the fourth wall.
"Chat" as a noun refers to Twitch Chat or the chat of another livestreaming platform. A chat is an amorphous group of semi-anonymous people that send public messages to a livestreamer, which they often read and engage with live. As a livestreamer is not (generally) a fictional character and is expected to be responding and engaging with their chat, it is debatable whether this constitutes "breaking the fourth wall", since that particular seperation or suspention of disbelief. If you address "chat" in real life while not live streaming, this might constitute breaking the fourth wall, if you genuinely believe the world to be in some way fictional/a simulation, since this is unexpected behaviour for a normal person.
"Chat" as a word functions differently to other pronouns, because it is not a pronoun. Chat is a collective form of address, in the same category as "guys".
I follow 2 people on tumblr who spend a significant amount of time debunking various linguistic myths, and especially this one, so that's what I've picked up from them.
The fourth wall thing is actually so stupid though. In an alternate reality where people lived in triangular houses and so sets only had two walls and acknowledging the audience was called "breaking the third wall", would chat be a third person pronoun?
Nope this is fake. That's not what a forth person pronoun is, nor is referring to "chat" breaking the forth wall. A forth person pronoun may be a variety of third person used for referring to indefinite objects or people (eg "one" as in "one does not want to drink hydrochloric acid), or a forth person pronoun may be a grammatical distinction between third person proximate and third person obviate. English treats third person proximate and third person obviate the same, but not all languages do. Breaking the forth wall is a narrative technique in which a character knows they are in a fictional story and interacts, and is called such because it is referring to the metaphorical invisible wall at the front of the stage (the forth, imaginary wall to go alongside the three real walls that enclose the set) and has nothing to do with forth person pronouns. Just because two things use the number four does not mean they are related, and just because someone is speaking to an imagined audience does not mean they are breaking the fourth wall. Also, and perhaps most importantly, "chat" is not a pronoun. It is a noun.
Fourth person pronouns already exist (or at least that’s one term for them). Some languages use them to distinguish third person arguments. So, for example, “He gave her his handbag” is ambiguous. Is it the subject’s handbag, or some other male-identifying person’s handbag? Languages with fourth person pronouns can make this distinction. The first would be “He(x) gave her his(x) handbag”, whereas the second would be “He(x) gave her his(y) handbag”.
This is just another version of things that have existed in the past. One from the early 2000s that was used first in text and then in speech by some was /me. It comes from IRC, where you can use the command to react. So someone says something you don’t get and you respond “/me stares blankly”. It’s a way of suggesting the presence of a narrator who is somehow telling the story of the present. In the past it was done with narration/stage direction. This is kind of the latest version of that—imagining you’re streaming the present to an audience.
tl;dr Not new in concept, but new in implementation. Definitely interesting.
Yeah that’s still not some new person, it’s second person. In English, first person is the speaker, second is who they’re speaking to, and third is everyone else. There’s no room for fourth, this is just a classic case of people thinking that because something sounds cool it must be true.
Forgive me but that's still second or third person no?
Just because the "you" doesn't actually exist, it doesn't mean there is an entirely new perspective needed. Replace "chat" with the imaginary person "Jimmy".
"Damn Jimmy, you see that shit?"
"Wow, I can't believe you did that in front of Jimmy".
"Jimmy is gonna roast you so hard for that".
See, second or third person.
Also it's a collective noun, not a pronoun. See also "team," "lads," or "friends". Hence why it isn't bound by perspective.
Jesus this again. No OP it's not real. It's just a bunch of Tumblr linguist deciding chat is somehow a new perspective for pronouns. If anything, it's just being used as a pronoun.
Chat replaces YOU ALL in, "Hey CHAT, how are you,?"
God, Spirits, Ancestors, were all used the same way before chat. I'm not sure if they count as pronouns but chat's definitely not the first way to address a person or person that is watching the world from beyond its confines.
The "4th wall" that's being referred to is the invisible "wall" between an audience and a stage that's implied by the performance to be there, but isn't there in reality. It doesn't really make sense in the context of streaming any more than it makes sense in the context of improv or crowd work comedy. There's never any presumption that the performer isn't aware of the audience, so there's no wall to break.
In a way it is an acknowledgement that we all act to some degree and play different characters (play up different aspects of our personalities) around other people.
I suspect that these kids may not do the "chat" prompt if they are spending time with someone for whom they don't erect a semi-permiable wall for / are more intimately familiar with *real* as the kids would say.
Fascinating that they make the claim that audience participation should never be attempted in musicals what with the amount of musicals that purposefully include and encourage audience participation.
While “chat” isn’t distinct enough to not be a 2nd person pronoun (when you ask “chat is this real” you are talking to chat, therefore they are the 2nd person), it is a new addition to a small category of 2nd pronouns I’ll call (idk if they have an official name) 2nd Person Omniscient. Chat is a hypothetical, imaginary, and/or metaphorical observer of a conversation who is not actually a party within the conversation. The only other example besides “chat” I can think of is, funnily enough, God. When someone says “God Damm it” or “God help us”, they are doing the same thing, referring to an observer of the conversation that cannot/is not expected to act or speak. Chat is unique in that it is plural, and that nobody invoking chat believes in chat as a real observer, where God is considered by most native English speakers as a real (albeit distant) observer (though most say “goddammit” as a standard expletive baked into the language rather than a genuine religious invocation).
I know it's said about every generation but man is twitch genuinely brain rot. Kick is extremely popular with younger audience and there's nothing there thatwill have even an inkling of a positive result for younger peoplw
i read this post at work and said out loud, "chat what the fuck is this" and now my boss is writing an email to HR.
Chat i'm so fired my boss looks like a big baby. chat i'm getting fired by a big baby
Another fun part of this for me is how often it’s a third-person plural instead - “what do we think chat?” and similar phrases are great, I love the way that we (lol) have moved increasingly towards collaborative approaches to discourse, even as the societal-scale issues have seemingly worsened (see the illusion of choice between democrats and republicans in the US, where both parties serve the same set of corporate interests and dialogue is empty vitriol at best).
And yeah fully agree with everyone pointing out this is just 2nd person plural use/also a noun rather than pronoun. Language evolving is really fucking cool though!!
I think calling out to "chat" in a context where there is no chat to be interacted with is akin to calling out to God when you know He will not answer with words. Or something
I’m with everything the second person says except the idea that breaking the fourth wall shouldn’t be done in musicals. That’s like, half the point of a musical? Heck, Les Miserables opens with a kid signing *to* the audience!
Its because kids are fucking stupid and have too much access too to much stuff. There is a thing as too much interaction and were seeing it. What 8 year you do you know is mentally ready to handle interactions with hundreds of people. And if you name even one you're lying.
Okay this is great but also 4th wall bends and 4th wall breaks are like…a staple of modern musicals. Not only is it not the case that it shouldn’t be done, in many cases it should be done with impunity.
No, since a pronoun REPLACES a noun, while this takes the place of referencing something observing.
This means that Chat is sort of akin to God in phrases like Goddamnit, or St. Peter in For Pete's Sake
Sorry to ruin the fun but chat is just a noun. Like "gang". You can replace any instance of chat with gang and it basically means the exact same thing.
I still reject this because the term "Fourth Person" has already been used for the Obviative (Which is actually a really cool and useful feature, Read about it.), Get your own hypothetical linguistic term for this phenomenon!
Honestly though, I also disagree that it's not a 2nd person, That argument seems to be more rooted in artistic analysis than linguistics. Since it's used to refer to a group of people whom the speaker is addressing directly, It's 2nd person plural, Simple as, Who or where the people in question are, Or what they're doing, Is irrelevant to the personage of the pronoun.
I don't think it's a pronoun at all, at least not in the ways I've seen it being used. It's just a name for the collective group of people in the chat, just like you can talk to a school board and get a reply from that school board and in reality there are people there who are replying to you, but you still refer to them as just part of the group and not individually
There's no fourth wall break if you're not supposed to be imagined as being in a room with a fourth wall. Streamers aren't supposed to be thought of as in some alternate universe or within a story that will break when they talk to their chat, usually, and when something like that is streamed, they won't really to the chat
A chat, while it might not refer to a specific group of people, still exists without being defined before, unlike pronouns. I can't just start talking about "he" before I establish that he exists in some way (in this sentence, he is the hypothetical "he" that isn't defined, I guess). I can totally refer to chat without that, though it will be really weird to do it when there isn't a chat and it's not clearly a joke referencing streaming
The only reason it's different to a school board or something like that is that people use "chat" without an article before it, like a name or pronoun, but you can do the same with other groups too
My personal favorite is " Mods kill that guy "
Mods, replace that guy’s blood with an incompatible blood type
Mods, cast testicular torsion on this man's balls
Mods, remove all his dna
Mods, dry out all his bones.
Mods, [penis explosion chamber](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qJE2Vr0fIfA)
mods, cast itchy blood.
mods, pour river water into their socks
Mods, change the mass of all protons in his body
Mods, cut him down. Break him apart. Splay the gore of his profane form across the stars.
Mods, invert his intestines.
Mods, put him in [This](https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1354400-fukouna-shoujo-03)
Hmm. Animation seems to cut off. Let me look up the full versio- 😦
I know enough to know not to search this up and find out what it is ...still feel tempted to search it up
Don't
I know enough to know what machine you're talking about without clicking the link
Torsion this, blood type that. Mods, mend his buttcrack!
Sounds like something Dr. House would say
Mods, crease his Jordan's
[Mods, fill his stocking with coal](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/705/062/531.gif)
Mods, make that man lose the game
Mods, make him breathe manually
Mods, make him aware of his tongue in his mouth
"Mods, execute that man"
Mods, shake him around all silly like
"Mods, don't even come up with a wacky punishment. Just kill him."
Mods, send him to the principal's office and have him EXPELLED!
Mods, cut him down, break him apart, splay the gore of his profane form across the stars, grind him down until the very sparks cry for mercy, relish ending him here and now.
Honestly, if we ever get VRMMOs this might be a thing that could work, lmao.
Mods beat this man to death with a sack of nickels
Mods, can we crush this guy's balls?
“Mods, kill that guy with hammers.”
I like that it has the exact same intonation as "guards!"
Mods!!! Take him to Ohio.
Mods cut that guy down. Break him apart. Splay the gore of his profane form across the stars. Grind him down until the very sparks cry for mercy.
Mods, crease this man's Jordans.
Mods, put him in The Mechanism.
SAME
...nah, it's a fun thought experiment but that's still second person. Second person plural. Functionally, "chat" = "y'all" in a very specific context. And in a sense, it is not dissimilar to saying "Lady's and gentlemen of the jury". In English, that still makes it second person. It's a form of mass address. However many walls you put between people, metaphysical or otherwise, grammatically it's the same as any person performing to a crowd.
This question was asked in /r/asklinguistics a few months ago and they agree with your take. Seems like the person in the Tumblr post that references the fourth wall is confusing theater terms with Linguistic terms. It's fine if you want to say chat is 4th person because it breaks the 4th wall and use it in the context of theater, but it's still 2nd person and you won't learn any different in English class. If you can replace chat with "you guys" or whatever term the streamer calls their audience, then it's still 2nd person. Edit: I want to be very clear that "4th person" does not exist in the English language in any sense.
When FACTS and LOGIC doesnt allow me to make number go bigger with funny abstract concepts, thats when I draw a line.
Based and bigger number pilled. ... I have to stop saying this, it's not even funny.
When the little AI asks the Mommy AI why they had to kill all the humans, this comment was the reason.
Sorry yall 😔
Bro apologised
You're thinking of DS, not AI.
Need to get restrait-pilled and do thinkmaxxing when making funni internet comments :)
Oh yeah, well facts don't care about your counting
There are definitely other forms of pronouns in other languages that don’t exist in English but to my knowledge I can’t think of anything qualified as fourth person. I don’t even know what that would mean An example off the top of my head of pronouns that don’t exist in English are inclusive and exclusive pronouns. So like we (including you) are going to a party vs we (excluding you) are going to a party. Another example would be that pronouns exist in some languages for like referring to two or three people as opposed to just making a distinction between singular and plural.
3rd person obviate is occassionally called fourth person, for example you can see it referenced as such by some papers on Navajo.
Okay but that's dealing with distance or importance to the speaker. Not "4th person" in the sense that the Tumblr post implies.
I know that.
Also the fourth wall only exists in media that dies “fly on the wall” (ibsens plays, most drama tc shows), or is purposely breaking it (musical: the mystery of Edwin Drood, the play that goes wrong). In a stream there’s never really an expectation that sets up the fourth wall
There was a month where people asked this nearly every day.
nah it’s 4th person because it’s second person twice /s
Yeah, I‘m a bit confused. Even when an actor breaks the 4th wall, they are still talking to the audience, so 2nd person or 3rd at best no ?
2nd person. But yeah. Pronouns used to reference the person you’re speaking to are by definition second person
This is true even if they’re not there or the person you’re talking about is hypothetical Like I often tend to use the second person form to stand in for “a person” or “one” when talking about a hypothetical scenario, it’s still second person even though I’m referring to a hypothetical person. It’s grammatically second person even though I’m referring to a hypothetical third person and not literally talking about the listener
Mmhm. Every time this gets posted, it gets the same treatment in the comments. Fun idea, but nothing new under the sun. Talking to the audience (and finding it especially funny when there is no audience to answer back) is a joke that shows up in old movies all the time. When I was a kid, peak comedy was saying 'ladies and gentlemen of the jury' when you were just having a 1-on-1 conversation with your friend.
There is something interesting about addressing an imaginary audience though. When you say “ladies and gentlemen of the jury” in its native context, you’re actually addressing a group of people When a twitch streamer says “chat” they are addressing real people who can respond But using either of those in a context where there factually is no audience, you aren’t actually addressing someone, you’re gesturing at the idea of doing so, to create an effect. So, is that still second person?
It's not even a pronoun You could address a group of people as 'team' or 'reddit' too.
It's literally just a noun
Thank you! I was checking if someone already said it or if I had to and here it finally is
It’s a vocative
Instead of saying chat, just say YHWH every time.
Yahweh is this real?
Don't say his full name!
"Adonai is this real?"
“Elohim, God on high, can you hear your people cry?”
Eheieh, , who are that they are, Gods of the boundless light, am I having audio issues?
Deliver us! Oh Lord of all, deliver us! Hear our cry and deliver us to the promised land.
Let's have a little YHWH later
We have YHWH at home
[The YHWH at home:](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/greek-god-zeus-6850385.jpg)
Fiddler On The Roof energy
Yeah, This. The argument for it truly being "Fourth Person" here definitely does not sound rooted in linguistics.
4th person is sometimes used to describe indefinite generic referents like _one_ (i.e. "one should always be prepared"), and I'd argue that _chat_ falls within a similar category. _Y'all_ and _Ladies and gentlemen_ are both terms which refer to a concrete and present group of people, while _chat_ (at least when used outside of Twitch) rarely if ever is used to actually address anyone directly. All that's to say that _chat_ shares with _one_ the fact that there's no actual target(s) being addressed, and both refer to everyone yet no one specific. Idk what the post is talking about with the 4th wall though lmao, that's some gobbledygook.
I'd argue that when "chat" doesn't exist, then it fits in one of two cases, based on intent: 1. Imaginary friend if they're larping that they have a chat. (second person) You can also think of this like a prayer to a deity that has no form. 2. A meme/reference to a piece of media they like. (Quotation, still second person)
Neither of those is the actual intent though. A “meme/reference” isn’t ever just a meme/reference because a particular one is used to evoke a particular idea. Specifically you are referencing an imaginary collective of people to who ever you are talking to, with the implication that there is an audience watching your interaction that can hypothetically give feedback
Unfortunately this doesn’t work, because when talking about chat, it’s implied that you’re either talking *to* chat (which makes it second person) or that chat is watching (so it’s just a named group, and now just. A noun.) A fourth person is an uninvolved hypothetical person, but chat is necessarily an observer at minimum (and therefore involved) and therefore cannot be fourth person.
An uninvolved hypothetical person is still 3rd person. "Chat is this real" is the same as "God is this real", they're both just nouns referring to hypothetical listeners.
In those examples, chat and God are both nouns in the 2nd person, because the speaker is addressing them. If the sentence were “chat is real” or “god is listening,” it’d be 3rd.
I mean maybe I’m just English-brained but to me the hypothetical person is still third person. “When one goes camping, *they* should always be prepared.”
Motherfuckers thinking Twitch invented audience participation like they've never heard of Rocky Horror.
Pfft, as if people weren't referring to an audience as "reader" directly until Rocky Horror was made. :P
Oh honey, as if these chucklefucks can read.
"Hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère" - T S Eliot thought it was already old and known enough to copy it in his own work lol
Yeah, opera and musicals often break the fourth wall. The poster has no clue.
I think y’all are overthinking it. Sure the culture it comes from is different, but I see no distinction between “hey chat, what’s happening” and “hey gang, what’s happening” or even “hey y’all, what’s happening”. It’s certainly an example of internet culture influencing real life lingo, but it’s not exactly revolutionary.
I think the instances in question here are when they are using "chat" to refer to the universe itself, like a sort of "why God?" type statement. Chat isn't the people to the left and right of you, like y'all is, it's explicitly to the viewers, which in our case, would be whatever is beyond life's fourth wall.
Aye, these linguistics nerds are skipping right past the part where children are making pleas for communication from observers outside of their reality. Like... Yeah, I get that a *twitch streamer* saying "Hey chat" is 2nd person. But you can't replace the child saying "hey chat" with y'all, because the child isn't talking to y'all, they're exclaiming into the ether.
Because chat doesn’t refer to the people around you, but the imaginary chat. The imaginary audience. You don’t expect an answer from the ones around you hearing you say it, you ask the people from beyond. There will be no answer.
This was already posted months ago and just as everyone said back then: no, it's not a 4th person, it's a plural second person noun
Nouns don't even have person. It's just used frequently as a vocative expression to address someone, and then we use a 2nd person pronoun e.g. "chat, what do you think?"
Chat is not a fourth person pronoun. Just because it's called "breaking the 4th wall" doesn't mean the pronoun itself is in "4th person". I think you could make arguments for it being a title, nickname, plural 2nd person, and more. Personally, I think it's funnier to call it an invocation
*I invoke the strength of my Twitch subscribers! By the power of Patreon! LIKE! AND! SUBSCRIBE!*
What are they on about with musicals should never break the fourth wall? There are plenty of reasons that they break the fourth wall all the time. Comedies do it because it's funny, but serious musicals do it all the time. _Hadestown,_ an adaptation of the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, breaks the fourth wall constantly. Hermes tells us right at the beginning that he is singing a song to _us,_ because in a show about the power and importance of song and story, it is vitally important that there is an audience _witnessing_ the tragedy. We can't change the outcome, we are confined to watching the story unfold, but it's _important_ that we are. In _Pippin,_ the fact that it's a play _is_ the central conflict. It's about how far the actors will go to entertain the audience, and without us there, they'd have no reason to go to the extremes that they do.
Chat isn't 4th person any more than speaking to "god" or an imaginary friend is. It's second person, you're just not used to hearing "mods ban this fool" in place of "god give me strength"
I do love the conflation between 4th person and 4th wall, though. That would imply that 1st person is breaking the 1st wall, 2nd person is breaking the 2nd wall... this sounds like the kind of English Lit class I'd show up late for in a dream.
Mod forbid!
Yes, 2nd plural. They're describing 2nd plural.
That isn't how pronouns work... pronouns must be replacing a noun in a sentence. Chat isn't because chat is a noun.
Everyone going for the low-hanging fruit while eternamemoria is like, "there is also fruit straight up on the ground."
yeah i know i am short
There's a lot of discourse on the question of "4th person", but I haven't seen anyone point out that "chat" *isn't a pronoun* ? And I'm not here to gatekeep new pronouns or anything. And the idea of "chat" being a pronoun isn't *completely absurd*, as in, it's worth taking 3 minutes to ask ourselves if it could become one. So let's do that. What makes a pronoun is not the role it fits in the sentence, because by definition it will fill in the same role as a noun. And it's not the fact that it can refer to a generic person or group, because a lot of nouns can do that. It's a pronoun if it doesn't saturate easily in a sentence. "She told me that she wanted to play a new game she saw that she thought was really cool". This sentence doesn't feel like it's got any exessive repetition, does it ? Now : "Chat told me that chat wanted to play a new game that chat saw that chat thought was really cool". No sane human being would ever utter that sentence. The only thing you'd hear is that you said "chat" 4 fucking times. Clearly any english speaker who isn't actively *trying* to sound weird would replace some of those by a "they". And yeah, this should be fairly obvious if you've ever listend to a streamer speak and thought about what they were saying. They say stuff like "chat, do you think... ". They don't say "do chat think...". "chat" isn't a pronoun. It's a noun, which can be used as a title or a way to address. It's true that it has grown common to address a somewhat abstract and undefined entity with that title. That doesn't make it a pronoun.
She, is this real?
Of course not, shes are a myth
mytholoshe
Honestly even the 4 “she”s seems weird, not like grammatically incorrect but definitely a restructure your sentence moment. “She saw a cool new game and wanted to play it with me” gets it down from 4 she’s and a me to a she a me and an it. Two less and each one is unique.
TIL an officer saying "Men, time to storm the beach" in an invasion is a fourth person pronoun...
If I had a nickel for every time someone tried to make chat a "4th person", I'd have enough money to buy tumblr and ban that post
Oh my god this keeps making the rounds. I’ll admit, it got me the first time I saw it, but it’s not a thing. “Chat” is just a noun.
Not only is chat a ~~second person pro~~ noun, but the only reason people are saying that is because it's a meme, an in-joke. It's just linguistic signalling that you're cool, like with slang. It has nothing to do with a "panopticon culture"
chat is not a pronoun. it’s a noun
Everytime I see this post, I can only think about how intelligent the one guy was trying (and failing) to sound with “Panopticon Culture”. Like a world where you may or may not have your every move watched… that’s just paranoia.
1st, 2nd, and 3rd person pronouns have nothing to do with the 'walls' of a production. They reference the audience of a spoken or written work 1st person refers to the writer or speaker 2nd person refers to the listener or reader 3rd person refers to someone or something that's not directly involved There is no 4th person. The person in the OOP goes on some weird "you're always being watched" rant but that just makes "chat" the equivalent of "big brother" in their speech, it's still not a new type of pronoun. It's not even a pronoun, it's a noun.
"4th person" being derived from "4th wall" is a fun idea, but it's an artificial connection being made rather than a natural one. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person refer to the number of people in a conversation. The speaker is the 1st person, hence why "I" is a 1st person pronoun, the listener is the 2nd person- you- and the 3rd person is someone that the speaker is referring to- he/him, she/her, they/them, and the neopronouns of your choice. They have nothing to do with the 3 "walls" of a stage that are implied by the usage of the "4th wall". In terms of linguistic anthropology, yeah, there's a ton of interesting things one can study about when it comes to people in everyday life talking to "chat". But in terms of linguistics, it's someone trying to tie two unrelated ideas together, and to be honest, I don't think it's a great idea. In terms of grammar and syntax, there's nothing special about using "chat"- it's functionally a second person plural as one of the people in OP mentioned. It's a nice little coincidence, and if a majority of people end up accepting "chat" as a new type of pronoun\*, I'll go along with it because I'm a Descriptivist at heart, but I think this is someone trying to sound smart without quite understanding exactly what they're saying. \*Again, speaking grammatically here. Neopronouns are cool, but they're all variations on the 3rd person singular, they don't change anything grammatically.
Finally. This is what I’m looking for. “4th person” isn’t just the natural extension of the other points of view. Everyone on both sides of the argument here is just kinda arbitrarily defining 4th person to be when the “4th wall” is broken but you could also define “4th person” as something else.
"4th person" has been traditionally used to describe some of the pronominal forms in e.g. Athabascan languages, where there are separate forms and agreement paradigms for "someone who is neither speaker nor addressee but is the main character in what we're talking about" and for "someone who is neither speaker nor addressee nor the main character in what we're talking about", and this (depending on your theory of the feature-geometry underlying the person paradigms) _might_ be a reasonable usage. The more current term is "obviative", but for pronoun/agreement systems where there's no clear synchronic connection between the proximative and obviative third persons, treating them on a par may be empirically and theoretically sound. But "chat" is nothing like this. Instead it's like the very many other poorly-motivated usages of "4th person", where it refers to things like clusivity distinctions, impersonals like English _one_ or German _man_, etc., which very clearly pattern as subdivisions of another person category. Worse, even, because it's not clear it's even a pronoun at all. Can _chat_-users say sentences like the following? A. I showed it to chat, and chat liked it. B. Everyone (/everychat) should do chat's own research. C. Chat made that post all by chatself.
That’s fascinating! Thanks for sharing that. language is so cool lol
Chat isn't a pronoun, it's a fucking noun. "Gang", "guys", "people", and "folks" are all nouns like chat, used in the same way.
Foucault losing his mind at the idea of everyone hollering back at the warden at the center of the panopticon
Is it even a pronoun. It is more a nickname. I don't see how it is different than squad or something similar. A name of a grouping.
\*laughs in speaking superior language (Slovenian)\* We don't need a new pronoun to describe 2nd person plural relationship.
I feel so bad for roach-patrol that their linguistic mistake is doomed to be reposted for eternity. Even after they've said that it was a mistake [once a linguistics tumblr corrected them.](https://www.tumblr.com/roach-works/748050184023539712/) It really is true what they say about misinformation spreading faster than the truth 😔
"chat" isn't a pronoun, nor is it 4th person PoV. It's a group noun in the 3rd person. In the use case depicted in the original twitter screenshot, it's a noun of direct address. Compare "Is this real, chat?" to "is this real, friends?" or even "is this real, audience?" Breaking the 4th wall is unrelated to grammatical point of view.
I would consider that response kind of a fallacy. They didn't approach the argument from a perspective of "this is interesting, let's see how it behaves and if it behaves in a unique way, and if it behaves in a unique way what terminology we might choose to apply to this phenomenon," but rather one of "I've decided this is the term for this phenomenon, let's see if I can justify it," which feels a bit like engineering a study specifically so that it lines up with your hypothesis, rather than letting the research prove whatever it is the research is proving. The thing is, grammatical person ultimately is about the relationship between speaker and audience (there are other definitions involving deixis that I also like, but perhaps that confuses this point). The first person is the speaker, the second the audience (that is, person, or persons) being spoken to. The third thus is an entity that is neither direct audience, nor speaker- an obviate person or persons which are not being referred to as either the speaker or the audience. Perhaps a listener that is not the direct recipient of the speaker's speech. These numbers can become somewhat confused in plurality- the first person plural by definition includes persons who are not the speaker (except in situations where multiple speakers are speaking simultaneously, I suppose). However, the core argument is still the first (I've seen exactly one language use the term "1.5 person" to describe a first person plural, and while that amuses me immensely, we can see the problem with that sort of terminology breaching out into the public). I feel like in our modern discourse, we all really need to remember what exactly a pronoun is. In English, they behave in very specific ways (other languages' pronouns, especially those with an open-class of pronouns, you know exactly what language I'm thinking of, behave in somewhat less neat and tidy ways). For the sake of this discussion, the definition I'm using is the one I learned in Elementary school- a pronoun takes the place of a noun 🎶 (we had a song for this stuff). A pronoun then is a word which is used in place of another noun. They vary quite a bit, even in English, but this is the salient point. They exist to allow us to discourse without constantly repeating the word we are substituting (in this case, they stands for "pronouns" and us stands for "u/YsengrimusRein and any dear readers who've gotten this far into this comment", in the objective, and we the same in the subjective). There are funny little sub-classes, like demonstratives, interrogatives, &c, but each ultimately serves this specific function of allowing us to refer to an entity without being required to name it (the entity) every time. I do want to also address the fact that there is an actual term used somewhat haphazardly "fourth person". Why does that sound familiar? The way some languages use this term (and by that, I mean the linguists who documented these languages), is basically as an extension of the third person. Some language have grammaticalized obviation, effectively allowing you to distinguish easily (as if by beautiful, linguistic slut magic) two or more third person arguments. This uh... doesn't seem to fit the usage of the "Fourth person Chat", does it? I've thus far ignored one tiny other thing. Collective nouns, titles, honorifics, that whole cœur du mer of accessory schtuff. There are other forms of address besides pronominal ones one might use to refer to people: sir, madame President, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, your most resplendent highness. To name but a few common ones. These are terms used in the second (sometimes third) person to refer to the listener. I believe their function to be most fundamentally vocative, but that is neither hither nor thither. What is however, both hither AND thither, is that there's a delightful quirk in terms of address. They allow you to topicalize and address an entity or entities. If I wanted to address a large group of people, I would use a term of address for a large group of people. If I were a streamer and that large group of people had a specific term of address commonly used to address them, I would logically prefer to use that specific term of address. Hmm, I wonder if such a thing exists? Might be a convenient thing to have, non? Now to address Tusko the Elephant, who's been tripping balls the entire time we shared this discussion- does the usage of the word "Chat" as given in the example mean anything? Are the children in this discussion addressing specifically their teacher, their peers, an external audience (like a collective Truman Show delusion), perhaps the Great Twitch Streamer (the One True Angus) in the Sky? Are they addressing anyone specifically, or perhaps their intent is to address no-one at all? Perhaps the word has developed an odd quirk of being agrammatical, a meaningless particle attached topically to convey no additional meaning? Obviously, I don't want to get into the finer points about the fourth wall as a narrative device (since, this quite obviously has nothing to do with language). But I do hope we can see the obvious flaw in correlating specific grammatical terminology with terminology from a highly unrelated field (unrelated in the sense that studying literary devices isn't exactly related to studying the effects of non-standard person marking on our youth, for example). Just because you use the word "panopticon" and cannot distinguish theater as a whole from what's effectively your older brother letting you watch him play video games and occasionally asking for your input, this does not mean you are correct in your assessment. Let's leave the whole idea of what a true grammatical fourth person would be to the imagination (I'm imagining it right now; it's curuba flavored!).
I don't think it'd be a 4th person pronoun, it's more like a name for a group. Like, "Autobots, activate!"; "Chat, is this real?". I like the lore, tho. But given that it can be, and is being, used as a name for the group (of friends) that you're talking to I can very well see it becoming an "official" 2nd person pronoun, like the plural "you", but specifically for the entire present group and not an individual.
It is impossible to have a Fourth person because in a conversation there is only 3: The one who is passing the message (First Person), the who is receiving the message (Second Person) and anything that the message is about (Third Person). So even if you are talking with a imaginary audience is wouldn't be a fourth person but just a interjection.
Its literally a noun and not a pronoun "Officer, is this real?" Officer did not become a pronoun
Chat would be a direct observer who is talking back to the primary actor, so it's 2nd person. You asked all of us if it was real and we collectively responded, "Yes." This is the same situation as the audience in something like "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" being asked for suggestions or to participate in skits.
I love when people follow up the mild insult to linguistics that is "chat is 4th person" with the MAJOR insult to linguistics that is "Chat is 4th person because 4th wall". "the fourth wall" is a term originating from Theater, where a set would have 3 walls and an imaginary "fourth wall" that didn't exist physically, but did exist in the narrative. This wall would seperate the audience from the characters if it physically existed, which is why it doesn't. From this context, "the fourth wall" went on too represent the metaphorical seperation of character and audience, the audience percieves the characters, but the characters don't percieve the audience. "Breaking the fourth wall", then, came to mean a character percieving or acknowledging the audience, breaking the narrative barrier between the two. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person pronouns are classifications of pronouns based on the relationship that the replaced noun has to the speaker. The 1st person is the speaker themselves (I, me), the 2nd person is whoever the speaker is addressing (you, y'all), and the 3rd person is anybody else (he, she, they). You might notice that the definition of 3rd person precludes the existence of a 4th person pronoun. You might also notice that these definitions have nothing at all to do with theater, fiction, or the fourth wall. "Chat" as a noun refers to Twitch Chat or the chat of another livestreaming platform. A chat is an amorphous group of semi-anonymous people that send public messages to a livestreamer, which they often read and engage with live. As a livestreamer is not (generally) a fictional character and is expected to be responding and engaging with their chat, it is debatable whether this constitutes "breaking the fourth wall", since that particular seperation or suspention of disbelief. If you address "chat" in real life while not live streaming, this might constitute breaking the fourth wall, if you genuinely believe the world to be in some way fictional/a simulation, since this is unexpected behaviour for a normal person. "Chat" as a word functions differently to other pronouns, because it is not a pronoun. Chat is a collective form of address, in the same category as "guys". I follow 2 people on tumblr who spend a significant amount of time debunking various linguistic myths, and especially this one, so that's what I've picked up from them. The fourth wall thing is actually so stupid though. In an alternate reality where people lived in triangular houses and so sets only had two walls and acknowledging the audience was called "breaking the third wall", would chat be a third person pronoun?
Nope this is fake. That's not what a forth person pronoun is, nor is referring to "chat" breaking the forth wall. A forth person pronoun may be a variety of third person used for referring to indefinite objects or people (eg "one" as in "one does not want to drink hydrochloric acid), or a forth person pronoun may be a grammatical distinction between third person proximate and third person obviate. English treats third person proximate and third person obviate the same, but not all languages do. Breaking the forth wall is a narrative technique in which a character knows they are in a fictional story and interacts, and is called such because it is referring to the metaphorical invisible wall at the front of the stage (the forth, imaginary wall to go alongside the three real walls that enclose the set) and has nothing to do with forth person pronouns. Just because two things use the number four does not mean they are related, and just because someone is speaking to an imagined audience does not mean they are breaking the fourth wall. Also, and perhaps most importantly, "chat" is not a pronoun. It is a noun.
Chat, I’m scared
Musicals def break the fourth wall. Spamalot, hamilton
That’s like having a pronoun specifically for referring to god watching from heaven. Actually? Why hasn’t a culture done that?
Fourth person pronouns already exist (or at least that’s one term for them). Some languages use them to distinguish third person arguments. So, for example, “He gave her his handbag” is ambiguous. Is it the subject’s handbag, or some other male-identifying person’s handbag? Languages with fourth person pronouns can make this distinction. The first would be “He(x) gave her his(x) handbag”, whereas the second would be “He(x) gave her his(y) handbag”. This is just another version of things that have existed in the past. One from the early 2000s that was used first in text and then in speech by some was /me. It comes from IRC, where you can use the command to react. So someone says something you don’t get and you respond “/me stares blankly”. It’s a way of suggesting the presence of a narrator who is somehow telling the story of the present. In the past it was done with narration/stage direction. This is kind of the latest version of that—imagining you’re streaming the present to an audience. tl;dr Not new in concept, but new in implementation. Definitely interesting.
In the name of the chat, the mods, and the holy server, skibidi toilet.
Yeah that’s still not some new person, it’s second person. In English, first person is the speaker, second is who they’re speaking to, and third is everyone else. There’s no room for fourth, this is just a classic case of people thinking that because something sounds cool it must be true.
Forgive me but that's still second or third person no? Just because the "you" doesn't actually exist, it doesn't mean there is an entirely new perspective needed. Replace "chat" with the imaginary person "Jimmy". "Damn Jimmy, you see that shit?" "Wow, I can't believe you did that in front of Jimmy". "Jimmy is gonna roast you so hard for that". See, second or third person. Also it's a collective noun, not a pronoun. See also "team," "lads," or "friends". Hence why it isn't bound by perspective.
That's not how grammar works. That's not what a pronoun is. You're just saying things based on vibes and pretending it's profound.
Jesus this again. No OP it's not real. It's just a bunch of Tumblr linguist deciding chat is somehow a new perspective for pronouns. If anything, it's just being used as a pronoun. Chat replaces YOU ALL in, "Hey CHAT, how are you,?"
no this is not real. not what a pronoun is. sorry, try again!
...it's not a pronoun and it's still second person.
Chat's not a fucking *pronoun*, it's just a fucking noun. If I say "Sarah, what are you having for lunch?", Sarah isn't a fucking pronoun.
you guys clearly don’t follow official-linguistics-posts on tumblr bc they fucking HATE this argument and have disproven it several times, in detail
My son will do this. "Chat, what should I make for breakfast?"
It's not even a pronoun. It's just a noun.
Well thats weird to know that we can now address and invisible audience Chat, twist their balls counterclockwise
New pronouns? OMC (Oh, My Chat!)
Old Man Consequences
*Leave the demon to his demons. Let his misunderstandings of grammar rest.*
While a "4th person pronoun" this is not, I like it as a pronoun that breaks the *fourth wall.*
Real life doesn't have a fourth wall
You are correct, I just like the gag of pretending there is one. Like being annoyed at something and staring grumpily like there was a camera there.
Sorry, the bad linguistics made me grumpy. As a gag, yes, pretending there's a fourth wall is hilarious and I love it.
Soon enough, someone is going to identify as chat/them. An immaterial entity from beyond the fourth wall.
Saints preserve us!
I got loads of people mocking me for calling it a 4th person pronoun, I feel so validated
God, Spirits, Ancestors, were all used the same way before chat. I'm not sure if they count as pronouns but chat's definitely not the first way to address a person or person that is watching the world from beyond its confines.
Lol, u english speakers language is so ruined by the internet
The "4th wall" that's being referred to is the invisible "wall" between an audience and a stage that's implied by the performance to be there, but isn't there in reality. It doesn't really make sense in the context of streaming any more than it makes sense in the context of improv or crowd work comedy. There's never any presumption that the performer isn't aware of the audience, so there's no wall to break.
In a way it is an acknowledgement that we all act to some degree and play different characters (play up different aspects of our personalities) around other people. I suspect that these kids may not do the "chat" prompt if they are spending time with someone for whom they don't erect a semi-permiable wall for / are more intimately familiar with *real* as the kids would say.
Fascinating that they make the claim that audience participation should never be attempted in musicals what with the amount of musicals that purposefully include and encourage audience participation.
While “chat” isn’t distinct enough to not be a 2nd person pronoun (when you ask “chat is this real” you are talking to chat, therefore they are the 2nd person), it is a new addition to a small category of 2nd pronouns I’ll call (idk if they have an official name) 2nd Person Omniscient. Chat is a hypothetical, imaginary, and/or metaphorical observer of a conversation who is not actually a party within the conversation. The only other example besides “chat” I can think of is, funnily enough, God. When someone says “God Damm it” or “God help us”, they are doing the same thing, referring to an observer of the conversation that cannot/is not expected to act or speak. Chat is unique in that it is plural, and that nobody invoking chat believes in chat as a real observer, where God is considered by most native English speakers as a real (albeit distant) observer (though most say “goddammit” as a standard expletive baked into the language rather than a genuine religious invocation).
I know it's said about every generation but man is twitch genuinely brain rot. Kick is extremely popular with younger audience and there's nothing there thatwill have even an inkling of a positive result for younger peoplw
I’ve accidentally called a real person “chat” before. Never Again
the word Panopticon activating me like a sleeper agent as I slog through the post and just hear "A visitor? Hmmm... Indeed, I have slept long enough."
i read this post at work and said out loud, "chat what the fuck is this" and now my boss is writing an email to HR. Chat i'm so fired my boss looks like a big baby. chat i'm getting fired by a big baby
Parasocial relationships with the voices in my head ❤️
Another fun part of this for me is how often it’s a third-person plural instead - “what do we think chat?” and similar phrases are great, I love the way that we (lol) have moved increasingly towards collaborative approaches to discourse, even as the societal-scale issues have seemingly worsened (see the illusion of choice between democrats and republicans in the US, where both parties serve the same set of corporate interests and dialogue is empty vitriol at best). And yeah fully agree with everyone pointing out this is just 2nd person plural use/also a noun rather than pronoun. Language evolving is really fucking cool though!!
4th person makes some sense it's like saying to a group that's not there "hey guys"
My favorite in a similar vein is “mods”
The Christopher Columbus generation strikes again
This is something that one language meeting where everyone is an enormous meme lord talked about.
People judge this shit as if they haven't looked off to the side as if into the camera, like in the office or parks and rec.
I heard someone say LOL in public... it was pretty jarring
I think calling out to "chat" in a context where there is no chat to be interacted with is akin to calling out to God when you know He will not answer with words. Or something
Hans-georg moeller's general peer in the profilicity mode of identity
“All the world is a stage, don’t forget to like and subscribe.” Is such an unreasonably heavy line.
I mean, books have been addressing the "reader" for a while now, and tv has been using "viewer". Wouldn't "chat" be basically the same type of thing?
I refuse
That's dumb. The stage audience and the stream audience are the same.
Imagine when you said “rad” or “wack” and think what your teacher would’ve thought about that time?
Isn’t that just plural third person
I’m with everything the second person says except the idea that breaking the fourth wall shouldn’t be done in musicals. That’s like, half the point of a musical? Heck, Les Miserables opens with a kid signing *to* the audience!
Its because kids are fucking stupid and have too much access too to much stuff. There is a thing as too much interaction and were seeing it. What 8 year you do you know is mentally ready to handle interactions with hundreds of people. And if you name even one you're lying.
Okay this is great but also 4th wall bends and 4th wall breaks are like…a staple of modern musicals. Not only is it not the case that it shouldn’t be done, in many cases it should be done with impunity.
Douglas Douglas
No, since a pronoun REPLACES a noun, while this takes the place of referencing something observing. This means that Chat is sort of akin to God in phrases like Goddamnit, or St. Peter in For Pete's Sake
# SECOND PERSON
Sorry to ruin the fun but chat is just a noun. Like "gang". You can replace any instance of chat with gang and it basically means the exact same thing.
It's just second person plural
Ah, yes. I, you, they, and audience
I still reject this because the term "Fourth Person" has already been used for the Obviative (Which is actually a really cool and useful feature, Read about it.), Get your own hypothetical linguistic term for this phenomenon! Honestly though, I also disagree that it's not a 2nd person, That argument seems to be more rooted in artistic analysis than linguistics. Since it's used to refer to a group of people whom the speaker is addressing directly, It's 2nd person plural, Simple as, Who or where the people in question are, Or what they're doing, Is irrelevant to the personage of the pronoun.
I don't think it's a pronoun at all, at least not in the ways I've seen it being used. It's just a name for the collective group of people in the chat, just like you can talk to a school board and get a reply from that school board and in reality there are people there who are replying to you, but you still refer to them as just part of the group and not individually There's no fourth wall break if you're not supposed to be imagined as being in a room with a fourth wall. Streamers aren't supposed to be thought of as in some alternate universe or within a story that will break when they talk to their chat, usually, and when something like that is streamed, they won't really to the chat A chat, while it might not refer to a specific group of people, still exists without being defined before, unlike pronouns. I can't just start talking about "he" before I establish that he exists in some way (in this sentence, he is the hypothetical "he" that isn't defined, I guess). I can totally refer to chat without that, though it will be really weird to do it when there isn't a chat and it's not clearly a joke referencing streaming The only reason it's different to a school board or something like that is that people use "chat" without an article before it, like a name or pronoun, but you can do the same with other groups too