It's usual to think that meaning is contained in words, the way sardines come in tins, or milk in bottles. Words are things you can look up in a dictionary. If you don't know what ‘iconoclastic’ means, a dictionary will help. But even though I do love dictionaries, I'm the first to admit that they'll only take you so far. Meanings also reside – perhaps even more essentially – in the grammar of the language, what some like to call its nuts and bolts. Here a dictionary is less helpful (try looking up ‘it’) and a grammar reference is needed, though such books tend to be über-unfriendly. This is a pity because grammar embeds meaning in centrally important ways. Take pronouns for instance – ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, etc. – which furnish one small example of grammatical nuts and bolts. One function of pronouns is to impart a sense of ourselves and our relationship with others, a crucial element of the social function of language, arguably its most important. All the sections in this chapter show how pronouns manage the nexus of grammar and meaning.

In the kingdom of we

Let's talk about ‘we’. I mean the pronoun ‘we’, as in plural subject: ‘you and me’. Not the ‘wee’ that explains the temperature of the paddling pool. Nor the endearing ‘wee’ that Scots are wont to add to nouns: ‘Come on in for a wee moment and have a wee cup of tea.’