my

   This is frequently used as the opening word of an intimate or friendly vocative expression. When used as part of a true endearment to someone with whom the speaker is emotionally involved, ‘my’ appears to have its full possessive meaning. The lover is not simply claiming possession of the loved one: the underlying thought is that the lovers belong to one another, that together they form a complete entity. The ‘you are mine’ statement is balanced by an equally fervent ‘I am yours’.

   In the watered-down endearments that are expressions of friendship, ‘my’ indicates that the speaker includes the hearer in his personal sphere of interest. ‘My dear chap’, or whatever, signals the acceptance of the hearer by the speaker. The word begins to indicate an assumption of some kind of superiority on the part of the speaker over the hearer in expressions like ‘my good woman’, ‘my lad’, ‘my girl’, etc., especially when such terms are used admonishingly. The implication is that the speaker has rights similar to those of an employer over the hearer. ‘My’ here is saying: ‘you are subject to my wishes.’ If the hearer in any of the situations mentioned above accepts the underlying premiss of the speaker, the use of ‘my’ will either pass unnoticed or will be welcomed. If the hearer does not wish to be part of the speaker’s intimate circle of friends, or does not accept that he is in a subordinate position to the speaker, the use of ‘my’ may well be resented, and this resentment voiced.

   It would be over-simplistic to say that ‘my’ contrasts directly with ‘you’ in vocative expressions that begin with one of those two words. It is true that a vocative beginning with ‘my’, especially when followed by a normally endearing word such as ‘little’, sets up the expectation of an endearment. John Cleese, as Basil Fawlty, makes comic mileage out of this expectation by using vocative expressions such as ‘my little piranha-fish’ to his wife, Sybil. It is also true that a vocative beginning with ‘you’ sets up an expectation of an insult, other things being equal. But lovers frequently use exclamatory terms to one another, of the ‘you beautiful brute’, ‘you funny little girl’, ‘you poor little pigeon’ type. And even when the whole vocative expression is very insulting in form, as in ‘you silly bitch’, ‘you swine’, etc., the tone of voice used can easily achieve a conversion into a covert endearment. ‘My’ can, in general terms, be described as an ‘accepting’ word: the word which acknowledges a distance between speaker and hearer is, as one might expect, ‘your’: your Honour, your Majesty, etc. ‘You is not so much a distancing word as a declarative one. It makes no claims, merely expresses an opinion. See also our.