A Period of Changes: The Early Modern Period

When speaking modern English, we use only one second-person pronoun you. It can be used when the speaker is referring to a single person or many. Yet language users can also mention thou which is also a pronoun similar to you. But the need for two pronouns with similar meanings and functions will lead to the replacement of one by the other. It is exactly what happened in the case of these two pronouns.

What was the Use Before?

With the syntactical changes in the Old English the uses of you and thou started to shift. Previously used as a second person plural pronoun, you was now used as a singular pronoun alongside thou. The instances where you would use you or thou, however, changed considerably. The choice of you and thou highly depended on the power that one held. This power was directly dependent on one’s social position, physical strength, age, wealth, gender as well as the relationship between the interlocutors.

Social Status as the Primary Force in the Use of Pronouns

In a situation where two dialogue partners differed significantly in their social status and the power that they held, the inferior was likely to address the superordinate with you and receive thou in response. Members of the socially equal class, be that the aristocracy or the middle class, tended to express politeness or emotional neutrality with the pronoun you. Certianly they expected to receive the same pronoun when talking to the member of the same social layer. Close friends, however, referred to each other as thou which was interpreted as a sign of intimacy. Emotionality also played a role and often lead to the use of thou even among socially distant interlocutors.

Family Relationship – Intimate or Formal?

The use of you and thou in a family relationship was also dependent on a number of factors. Before officially becoming a part of the society, children firstly acquired the subordination to power from their parents. The use of pronouns was directly dependent of the sex, age and the social status of a parent and a child. If the latter occupied a higher position or were already married, then the parents used you and received you. When a child was young, not married or was a female, who usually occupied a socially lower position than a man, then to address a parent as you and in response receive thou was considered to be the norm.

The Current Use

Nowadays, however, the use of these two pronouns remains rather straightforward: in the majority of cases, you is used as the second person singular and plural pronoun, making its meaning evident only from the context. Thou is mainly reserved for prayers and literature where it is used to recreate the archaic language.

References:

Brown, Richard and Arthur Gilman. 1960. “The pronouns of power and solidarity”. Style in Language. Ed. Thomas Sebeok. Cambridge: MIT Press. 253-276.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 2003–. Ed. Kory Stamper. 11th ed. Merriam-Webster Inc. <https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/why-did-we-stop-using-thou> (accessed December 9th, 2021).

The Linguistics Channel. 2013. Thou, Thee, Thy and Thine. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS6xCW7LPrE&t=5s> (accessed 10th December 10th, 2021).