Speak With Impact: Understanding Intensive Pronouns

Using an intensive pronoun is a useful way to emphasize what you want to say or to make certain that people understand you correctly. English speakers use these all the time when speaking or texting, so this is definitely a helpful topic if you’re an intermediate or advanced English speaker.

If you want to learn everything there is to know about intensive pronouns, keep on reading. We are going to see it all!

What is an intensive pronoun?

To understand intensive pronouns, let’s start from the basics and review what a pronoun is. A pronoun is a word that takes the place of another word. Look at the example sentences below:

• Fareed came home when Sarah had already left.
• He came home when she had already left.
  

The two sentences are the same, except the second sentence uses the pronouns he and she to replace the names Fareed and Sarah.

To be clear and concise, we try to avoid repeating the same words over and over when we speak or write. This is very common with names, and this is the reason we use pronouns. However, there is something peculiar about intensive pronouns, as we will see going forward.

Before we go any further though, take a look at the table of intensive pronouns below. You’ll see that each intensive pronoun corresponds with a personal pronoun (words like I, you, he, and she). This is important, as intensive pronouns are often used along with the corresponding personal pronoun, as you can see from the example sentences.

You might have noticed a couple of things about these pronouns. First, each one is made by combining a personal pronoun like my, your, him, her, it, our, you or them with the word -self (for singular pronouns) or -selves (for plural pronouns).

You might also have noticed that these are the exact same forms that we use for reflexive pronouns. This is a very important characteristic that we will discuss in more depth below. Also, you might have noticed that this type of pronoun highlights and emphasizes that the action is done by the subject of the sentence.

What about gender-neutral intensive pronouns?

Are the pronouns we saw in the table all of the intensive pronouns used in English? Not quite. As the English language evolves and society changes it has become more acceptable to use the gender-neutral pronoun themself when the gender of a person is non-binary, unknown or irrelevant to the sentence. Take a look at the following examples:

• Alex prefers to do things themself rather than asking for help.
• The doctor themself left a note for the patient’s family.
• Each student must submit the assignment themself.

In the first case we are talking about Alex, a non-binary person that prefers to use the pronouns they and them. The polite thing to do is to refer to Alex using the whole set of gender-neutral pronouns, including they, them, their, theirs and themself.

In the second sentence, we don’t know the gender of the doctor that left the note – it could be a man or a woman. Rather than assuming the gender of the doctor, we can use a gender-neutral pronoun.

In the last sentence, it’s really irrelevant if the students are male or female. They need to hand in the assignment by themselves – they cannot ask someone else to do it for them. Yet, we could twist the sentence a little so that we can use the regular plural pronoun, like this:

The students must submit the assignment themselves.

In any case, themself is a respectful word that is being used more and more frequently.

Reflexive and intensive pronouns

As we said before, reflexive and intensive pronouns have exactly the same form. How do we tell them apart then? Even if they have the same form, they serve very different functions, and understanding these functions can help us distinguish between them.

In the first place, reflexive pronouns indicate that the subject of a sentence is performing an action on itself. In other words, the action affects the person or thing doing the action. Look at these examples:

• I cut myself while I was cooking.
• Joan can take care of herself.
• The company rebranded itself last year.

These are all reflexive pronouns. (By the way, you can read our article on reflexive pronouns for an in-depth discussion of how they are used). We know these are reflexive pronouns because the action in the sentence is always performed on the subject, whether this action is cutting, taking care of or rebranding.

On the other hand, intensive pronouns don’t describe this same type of action:

• I myself could not believe this.
• The mayor herself attended the event.
• He himself could not understand what he had written.

In these sentences, the action is not actually performed on the subject. Instead, the intensive pronoun is a way to emphasize who or what performed the action. This meaning can also be achieved with other words, as in the following examples:

• Even I could not believe this.
• The mayor in person attended the event.
• Even he could not understand what he had written.

Since they serve different purposes, reflexive pronouns and intensive pronouns are placed in different parts of the sentence. Reflexive pronouns are always linked to a verb, and therefore they generally follow the verb directly. Let’s take the examples we used previously and highlight the verbs:

• I was cooking and I cut myself.
• Joan can take care of herself.
• The company rebranded itself last year.

In contrast, the intensive pronouns are usually placed immediately after the noun or pronoun they emphasize (although they can sometimes appear later in the sentence):

• I myself could not believe this.
• The mayor herself attended the event.
• He himself could not understand what he had written.

Intensive pronoun placement

We have seen that intensive pronouns are usually placed next to the subject noun or pronoun that they need to highlight. Sometimes, though, the pronoun appears later in the sentence, and in this case it will give a slightly different meaning. Let’s see how the different position of the pronoun can alter the meaning of otherwise identical sentences. Compare the example sentences in the table below.

Why do we use intensive pronouns?

From the examples above, we can clearly see that the position of the pronoun plays an important role in the meaning of the sentence. The pronoun gently nudges the listener or reader towards the meaning that we want to express.

The beauty of small language details like this is that we can add them to the basic information we need to share. Intensive pronouns are just like this – they provide extra context and can easily be removed. In fact, if we remove them, the sentence will still be grammatically correct. Let’s take a look at the previous examples:

• I myself could not believe this. = I could not believe this.
• The mayor herself attended the event. = The mayor attended the event.
• He himself could not understand what he had written. = He could not understand what he had written.
• The students themselves completed the assignment. = The students completed the assignment.

As a matter of fact, a foolproof way to distinguish reflexive pronouns from intensive pronouns is to try to remove them altogether. If the sentence doesn’t make sense without the pronoun, then it’s a reflexive pronoun. If the sentence still makes sense without the pronoun, then it’s an intensive pronoun. Look at the examples we used before:

• I cut myself while I was cooking.
• Joan can take care of herself.
• The company rebranded itself last year.

If we remove the words myself, herself and itself, the sentences are incomplete. What did I cut? What can Joan take care of? What did the company rebrand? The sentences simply don’t work like this – they are missing something important. In these cases we can be 100% sure that the pronouns are reflexive pronouns because they can’t be removed.

Common mistakes

There are a few common mistakes regarding the use of intensive pronouns. Let’s tackle these before we wrap up.

One of the most common mistakes regarding intensive pronouns is to mismatch the subject and the pronoun and confuse them by number or gender:

• Mistake: The students himself completed the project.
• Correction: The students themselves completed the project.

In case you don’t know the gender of a person, remember the gender-neutral option themself:

• Mistake: The teacher himself (herself?) gave us the answer.
• Correction: The teacher themself gave us the answer.

It’s important not to overuse intensive pronouns. If we do, the sentence will be confusing and awkward:

• Mistake: My father himself, my brother himself and my uncle himself danced with me at my wedding.
• Correction: My father, my brother and my uncle danced with me at my wedding.

The intensive pronoun itself can refer to objects, but we need to make sure not to use it when unnecessary because that would result in a sentence that is not logical:

• Mistake: The book itself fell from my bag.
• Correction: The book fell from my bag.

Wrapping up

Intensive pronouns are a valuable tool to emphasize specific elements of a sentence. They can help you provide context and emphasis, and they can help make your meaning clear.

An important part of communication is expressing fine details and shades of meaning, and a big difference between a beginner and an intermediate or advanced English speaker is the ability to do this well. Using intensive pronouns is a great way to add some of those shades of meaning so you can say precisely what you want to express.

Remember the difference between reflexive and intensive pronouns, avoid common mistakes, and practice using them in different contexts, and intensive pronouns will help you communicate your ideas more clearly and effectively.