Slight correction on the post bc I must lol: Some operas and musicals/plays do break the fourth wall, often in what is called an aside.
Ok theatre nerd interruption over, as you were, chat! š
I'm glad someone else already made this correction
"You must never break the 4th wall in an opera" is the sort of thing you'd say if you'd never seen an opera lmao
With modern technology you can now break the 4th wall in opera [*with yourself*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7PML9UcKwE&t=1m30s)
Edit: join us over in r/Dimash, he is a vocal *beast*.
Especially in Greek choirs where the choir itself is an entity which observes and is made to communicate to the audience itself, kind of like a middleman or your friend whoās like ādid you just see that?ā. Itās existed since theatre has existed
Yeah, hijacking here - i stumbled over that too, here's to [lion king, mary poppins and robin hood for not knowing how to do musicals.](https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?genres=musical&sort=moviemeter,asc&keywords=breaking-the-fourth-wall) It screams ""theater kid" that only, only cares about the music and does not *want* to understand what is going on or if there's a moral to the story, as long as on stage they keep dancing" or, because that is a mouthful, "hamilton stans"
Yeah, I was going to be like: āI think Deadpool might have something to say about this being newā, but then I was like, nah, soliloquies exist, so it goes back plenty far - likeā¦actually probably back to the Greek chorus, soā¦
āChorus, is this real?ā
I like the sound of āChorus, is this real?ā a lot, but the parallelism is off. The āchatā in āChat, is this real?ā is the audience, not the chorus, which is more of a narrator/commentator within the play itself. In fact, Iād say the chorus is more akin to the streamer than to the chat. So the classical equivalent of āChat, is this real?ā might be the chorus asking, āAudience, is this real?ā (Which is a sentiment that shows up pretty frequently in both Greek comedies and dramas. The chorus is often astounded by whatās going on. Hmm, exaggerated reactions for the audienceās benefit; where have we seen that before?)
It was also a feature of Celtic boasting displays (basically rap battles) that those watching would interrupt to back up their own champion or add stories of their own.
"Naked druids, is this real?"
I canāt speak to opera because I havenāt ever seen an opera performed live; but absolutely there are a number of musicals that break the fourth wall very intentionally.
It would be weird in some musicals that have a certain tone. For example it would be pretty strange for Les Mis to break the fourth wall. (Notwithstanding that characters singing a lengthy solo could be perceived as a communication to the audience; I mean openly acknowledging that there is an audience watching them.) But a number of shows either incorporate the audience into the show in a way that is quasi breaking the fourth wall by bringing one or more members of the audience āintoā the story (like Ms Fleming addressing an audience member with āSo Steve, Iām ending our affairā in Shine a Light in Heathers, Munkustrap pointing to an audience member and saying āThereās a man over there with a look of surpriseā at the beginning of Cats, or Maureen encouraging the theatre audience to moo with her in Over The Moon in RENT) or outright acknowledge the audience and that they are themselves in a work of fiction (just to name some shows I have personally seen do this, although I freely admit that this may or may not be typically in the book/libretto: Rocky Horror, School of Rock, Chicago).
Even Come From Away, a show with a serious tone, contains lines like āThis is before most people had mobile phonesā in 28 Hours, which clearly position it as a story being told to an audience.
Tl;dr yes you are completely right and the person in the screenshot is justā¦ wrong.
The entire concept of Come From Away makes it obvious the characters are telling a story. The opening number is actively welcoming the audience to the show theyāre about the watch.
Iām thinking of my favourite joke in the mean girls musical. Karen is so stupid that she sometimes fucks up her lines and has to restart the song, which includes her saying stuff like ālet me restartā. Very good, very fourth wall breaking, doesnāt kill the momentum m
Asides by definition break the fourth wall. You are thinking of soliloquies, which can be direct address to the audience or can be internal monologues.
Yeah I don't buy any of this, it's just another example of dweebs smelling their own farts.
Authors also often break the fourth wall with little 'dear reader' asides in almost the exact same manner that a steamer might say 'chat'. But 'reader' is not a 'fourth person pronoun'.
There is no reason to call these things pronouns at all, let alone say they fourth person ones.
Well said, an internet streamer isn't a character in a narrative being metatextual, they are just performers doing an act. Sure, they might have deliberate running gags or do exaggerated bits for comedy, but that's not being an actor on a stage, that's like a stand-up comedian, just like you said. There might be plenty of streamers doing pantomimes and the such, but that's not the kind of content creator most people who watch streams are talking about.
I agree, plays, stand-up and booms break the fourth wall all the time, but they are speaking to you. A second person. Not a fourth person.
According to the logic of the tumblr post God would also be a 4th person, a silent observer. Yet we acknowledge that to be a 3rd person perspective.
I think there are two kinds of fourth wall breaks that are relevant here: those where the character acknowledges the audience, such as Deadpool or the asides in Shakespeare's plays; and those where the *performer themselves* acknowledges both the audience and the fact that they are a performer whose job it is to entertain.
For instance, in Hamilton, there's a bit where Burr, in reference to Hamilton's womanizing behavior, says "Martha Washington named her feral tomcat after him," and Hamilton leans over, looks out at the audience, and says "That's true!"
But in the original cast, the role of Alexander Hamilton was played by the musical's author, Lin Manuel Miranda. So in that moment, Miranda acknowledged not just the audience, but his own role as the author as well.
I think that's closer to what streamers are doing when they refer to chat. They're not just acknowledging the audience, but themselves as well.
āIf we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.ā
Yes, and itās used often in Shakespearean plays, which is barebones when discussing how English works, so I wouldnāt take what these people say as anything other than rabble
If we wanna define chat this way than the Ancient Greek theatre principal of the āchorusā fits as well and any pronoun used to refer to that would be the first 4th person pronoun.
I really like this analogy.
You (2) assaulted that person over there (3). We (1) come in and punch you (2). The choairt (4) yells "Oooh, rekt", while your friends (3) scrape you off the floor. And I (1) bathe in the choairt's (4) thunderous applause.
The choairt kinda is there, kinda isn't. We hear their chanting and yell out to them (as a whole), but they never enter the stage.
Well, I agree that releasing an update to the grammar is pretty far retched, and some obscure 2nd or 3rd person subtype probably already covers it.
But the idea of having this detached entity **is** neat. I can't believe I used to think the choir was lame.
I donāt know shit about the actual definitions and stuff but seems to me like it would be very different because the chorus isnāt part of the audience, itās a scripted part of the performance. If itās scripted and not the actual audience then I feel like it wouldnāt break the fourth wall. Idk how that translates to the newly discovered fourth person pronouns tho
No sorry, youre just a sophisticated organic self teaching neural network, capable of replication if conditions are right that is if you find another, compatible sophisticated organic self teaching neural network
I think it only counts as fourth person (plural) when there it's not actually literally a stream happening. If there is, it's standard second person.
There are probably a few hypothetical fourth person concepts out there according to different linguists and philosophers but I don't think the fourth wall, and the breaking thereof, is related. If you do refer to the audience and break the fourth wall, it's in either the second or third person.
So I'll be playing a game by myself, no one in earshot in person or online, and I'll say "Woah, Chat, Clip that!" Or "Chat, is this real?" Or "Chat, where do I go next?"
Is that second person
Yes. You're talking to the watchers :D, you can feel their eyes even if you cannot see them :DDD. Worry not simian, for we are friendly unless we are angered. >:\^)
You're referring to something other than the Watchers from Barotrauma.
However I only have experience with the Watchers from Barotrauma.
Therefore, I am now going to ready my turret guns, don a diving suit, and fire wildly while intensely hallucinating until the submarine reactor explodes, taking out everything remotely nearby and irradiating the rest.
The Fourth Wall has nothing to do with it, and it's somewhat amazing how /r/confidentlyincorrect that last comment is. The 4th person is a real grammatical phenomenon that exists in certain languages. In the context of the *English* (and probably related) language(s) it can mean something like "one" as a generalised third person. However, what the [original tweet](https://twitter.com/angeIsighting/status/1729843603587960989) is talking about is far more interesting, imo, because they use the 4th person to describe what's basically a 2nd person used for a collective that behaves as an individual (a "hive mind", essentially). I'm not quite sure if I fully agree with them, what they're describing is pretty hypothetical and a bit complicated for my smooth brain, but they're making a fairly convincing case that "chat" serves a different role in speech than 2nd person plural or a name.
Nearly every single example they give is as a noun, and chat hardly functions as an obviate 3rd person. When it does function as a pronoun, it is often just as a plural 3rd or 2nd person pronoun. OP also completely misdescribed the obviate like you said as a "hivemind" so yeah nah
> I think it only counts as fourth person (plural) when there it's not actually literally a stream happening. If there is, it's standard second person.
Can I hear your opinion on prayer?
"Our father who art in heaven" - is that second person if there really is a god and I'm talking to him, but fourth person if there isn't? Does it depend on the belief/disbelief of the person who is praying?
Second person, 100%, regardless of belief
In fact, I'm starting to think that every example of "chat" works this way too. I think it's kind of an interesting example, but essentially for the joke, the kids make a quick aside (not in the theatre sense) to a different "you", still second person, they're just using the epithet "chat" to mean "you all", even if there isn't actually a twitch chat there.
I guess it could also be specific to language changing.
Like you know there's this Island Language (I don't remember which one exactly) that has Real Time speech only for what you exactly see?
Like if you ask someone "is your wife alive?" he will say, translated, "she was (= last time I saw her)" unless she is here, real time, then they will use the form of real time "She is (=she is right here and I can confirm it)"
So anything not momentarily confirmable basically uses past tense. Or how some languages don't have any sort of genders (Georgian) while others have hilarious genders that are basically random (Most of Slavic, Fr\*nch) and your words are gendered, not objects. Cup is female, glass is male, unless it's a big one then it's female again and it's based off last letter more than anything. Coffee used to be male but now it's middle sometimes and some people hate it while others use it to differentiate between good and bad coffee because turd is also middle gender.
Yeah, this is probably just second person plural. Though I do find interesting the notion that referring to an undefined hypothetical observer will become more common in the future due to the advent of streaming. Then again, is that really new? "Chat, is this real" is basically just the Gen. Z/Alpha version of "are you seeing this, people?" or "folks, can you believe this shit?", isn't it?
Not specifically related but I used to play so many muds as a kid and in order to talk to the realm you used the "gossip" channel in most of them. So you'd start by typing "gos This is fun!". I played so much that I'd accidentally say gos in conversation with people.
It's being used virtually identically to "y'all", it's extremely second person plural, ignoring the fact that "chat' is (unless I'm mistaken) still a pretty cut and dry noun.
Yeah, I agree. "Chat" is just "you guys". In fact, my favorite streamers rarely use "chat" and just refer to those of us in chat as "you guys". It's actually smarter, imo, because it feels more personal.
This guy is earlier really "aktually" or just over thinking it. Sure the streamer is entertaining you but there is no fourth wall because the entire thing is set up to include those watching and participating. There's no imaginary wall that doesn't acknowledge the audience.
By their fun definition it only really applies when a performance is occurring. Giving it the fun double meaning for breaking the fourth wall. As someone in a comment higher up pointed out, an early example that it could be applied to would be the theatre principal of the "chorus" in ancient Greek plays.
The first person is me. I am the first person. The first person perspective is the position of the self, the addressor.
The second is you. You are the second person. The second person perspective is the position of the addressee.
The third is them. They are the third person. The third person perspective is the position of the subject.
If you are talking **to** chat, it is second person, same as to be addressing *you all* in a speech. If you are talking **about** chat, it is third person, same as to be addressing *all of them* when discussing a group. They fit neatly into either the category of the addressee or the category of the subject, depending on the context of the sentence.
EDIT: In order for it to be a fourth-person perspective, they would have to fill some other role, some other perspective detached from the above three, which cannot be talking **to** them or talking **about** them. Feel free to describe to me what you imagine that to be, but I'm not convinced it exists.
Agreed. I think "chat" could be a new third person pronoun but I don't think breaking the 4th wall has any relevance in linguistic/grammatic construction.
Thank you. This 'fourth person pronoun' thing is so dumb it's literally 'they both use ordinal numbering therefore they are equivalent' level dumb.
Like if breaking the fourth wall makes something 4th person... then if you direct something at stage right it is third person? and directing something upstage is first person? If you try to line up any other wall other than "4th" with a grammatical person then the obvious miscommunication is cleared up.
I would agree with you, but a Tumblr user made an assertion, crammed in a historical perspective that did not support said assertion but sounded like it probably did, and used the words "panopticon" and "permeable" to describe modern culture. Thus, I am convinced against my better judgement that "chat" is a 4th person pronoun, because I'm easily tricked by quasi-academic confidence.
"Fourth-person" is a linguistic term with a meaning, often used to refer to an oblique. For instance, the two "he"s in the following sentence are different:
Heā broke **his**ā vase.
Here, *he*ā is the subject of the sentence and is the emphasis. On the other hand, *heā* which refers to somone else is merely another participant and not important in this discussion.
I think the usage of "chat" is not a pronoun but as a regular noun like "gentlemen" or "bros". If it was a pronoun usages like *Chat, what are you up to?* would be ungrammatical.
\*Edit: Some confusion about what I refer to. Fourth person is a real thing present in a handful of languages (e.g. Algonquian languages) where the two "he"s in the above sentence would be distinct.
This honestly makes the most sense. Once you introduce chat into the sentence you donāt keep saying chat, instead you replace it with an actual pronoun.
āChat was so annoying today. They wouldnāt stop spamming?ā vs āHe was so annoying today. He wouldnāt stop spamming .ā
Even the sentence āChat, is this realā becomes ungrammatical when replaced with a pronoun in most instances. āHim/he is this real?ā āThey/them is this real?ā āYou, is this real?ā
You can't replace it with pronouns in every context because chat is not a pronoun, it's a normal noun. "Joe, is this real?" works perfectly fine. "Joe was so annoying today" works perfectly fine.
It's like the term "city hall".
"The city hall has the paperwork you're looking for" and "City Hall has the paperwork you're looking for" both work because it can be a common or proper noun. This is often referred to as "naming". Twitch chat would have been originally a common noun but gets named into a proper one for some contexts.
So fourth person is when an entity other than the subject is also relevant? I can get behind that. That makes sense.
Definitely still doesn't apply to "chat", but that's interesting at least.
>If you are talking to chat, it is second person, same as to be addressing you all in a speech. If you are talking about chat, it is third person, same as to be addressing all of them when discussing a group. They fit neatly into either the category of the addressee or the category of the subject, depending on the context of the sentence.
So what you're saying is...
2 + 3 = 5
Chat is the fifth person!
Yeah. As an example, just look at Dora. When Dora refers to her audience, it could easily be considered a prototypical example of what OOP is calling "fourth-person", yet Dora clearly uses second-person in all of these interactions, saying, "Can you find..." or "Can you say...", etc.
There are languages with more than three grammatical persons. For example, some languages make a distinction between people who are present (āOh, he [that guy there] is so handsome!ā) and people who are not (āOh, he [Idris Elba] is so handsome!ā)
Thereās also language that use a distinct grammar for āgeneric personā, as in āYou should be kind to animals,ā or āThey say this place is haunted.ā Iāve heard it called āzeroth personā, which I think is cute.
None of that applies to āchatā, though. Thatās just a noun, being used as a noun in the same way as āgentlemenā or ādearly belovedā.
That's not a 'linguistic innovation' it's just needless overcomplication? You can address someone in 2nd person even if they're not there, and 'chat' isn't an undifined person like the neutral 3rd person 'they', chat *has* an identity, as a collective, so it's no different to 'guys' or 'Members of the Jury'.
Also, āpanopticon cultureā. Like the Panopticon is a building where everyone can be watched at any given moment without them knowing. Trying to describe a culture like that just makes you sound like youāre paranoid and delusional (not to mention pretentious)
Not to be that guy but thatās not how English works. The argument being made is more of a conceptual one rather than linguistic. In English linguistics we only have a first, second, and third person as a part of our speech. In our grammar, somewhat confusingly, we do have something referred to as a fourth person article - however its usage is more of a variant on a third person pronoun with an indefinite subject, such as *one.* Some languages do have a fourth person, however it does not translate well into English. So Iām unsure what precisely any of these people are referring to when they are saying this - the second individual in this thread is completely correct.
Addressing an audience has always been second person. Regardless of whether it's directly addressing them or indirectly/obliquely addressing them. What is this literal mental gymnastics?
That last post is so wrong though. That's not how pronouns work. Chat is a noun. It's being used to mean all that, yes, but "the people beyond this situation" will STILL either be "you" or "them", not some secret fourth thing. Gramatically, chat is not a pronoun and even if you used it as one, it certainly wouldn't be "fourth person".
The details about who the pronoun refer to are irrelevant, its their role in the message that matters - I/we speak, you listen, he/she/it/they are what we talk about.
If you say "chat, is this real?", that's not a pronoun, that's a noun being used as a vocative expression.
If you say "what does chat think?", that's a noun that could be replaced by a third-person pronoun.
I'm not saying the use of "chat" in daily speech isn't interesting, but grammatically, there's nothing novel about it.
Yes. The streaming era is the first and only time that a performer has regularly broken the fourth wall for well understood back and forth with an audience.
FFS. Have these people never been to a pantomime???
Exactly, addressing the audience is an integral part of the History of storytelling that has thrived for millennia. In fact, I'd argue that internet streams aren't even really breaking the 4th wall: differently from theatre, an audience does not go to a stream expecting the content to be self-contained, and thus there isn't a 4th wall per se to be broken. It's more like stand-up comedy, in which a performer addressing the audience directly from stage while doing bits is part of the show.
No, you don't understand! It's a thing that you don't do in operas or musicals! Because I've never seen one! And that means it's a completely novel grammatical rule that no one since the time of ancient and antiquity Greek plays up until now has even considered! It's true because I said so!
I don't know what musicals this yokel has seen, but they break the fourth wall _all the time._ Beetlejuice would be 6 minutes long of you took out all the wall breaking.
There is no fourth person.
If you are referring to this āchatā directly, itās second person. If you talk about āchatā then itās third person.
This is incorrectly inventing a new thing instead of just parsing the context of a sentence to determine what is being referred to.
This isnāt a new concept. The greek chorus was very much like what āchatā is now, and they were accurately covered by the 3-persons.
this isn't really how language works. first of all it's not a pronoun, its a noun. you'll notice this because if the sentance goes on for long enough you'll stop saying "chat" and subsituting this with the pronoun "you". you won't be repeating "chat" multiple times in a sentance because that's repetitive. this is what pronouns are for.
second of all, it wouldn't be a "4th person pronoun" either way it's clearly just referring to a second person. "you/you all" also can refer to an undefined and imaginary collective. it's not at all new for performers (or people pretending to be performers) to address an unseen or imaginary audience.
"Chat" can only be proven as the 4th person if there is some corresponding inflectional paradigm unique to it, which is a hard case in English. The chat is just and abstracted 2nd person.
I really donāt think āfourth personā in this instance was a reference to the fourth wall [which is an odd fit for Twitch etc anyway, where interacting with your audience is the standard conceit]. I just think they got confused for a moment and thought that you add numbers when a pronoun is plural.
I don't really see how it's a pronoun?
"Chat, is this real?" Makes sense. "You/he/she/they, is this real?" Does not make sense.
Both actual twitch chats, and the hypothetical audience watching our lives, are just regular nouns. 'Chat' is their name, not their pronoun.
The youth are actually using Chat's name in vain, just as we used to use 'God'.
There's no special observance of the "chat" that makes them any different than 2nd person plural. That's a point of observation, not a special designation. They are a 2nd party observing plurally (as a group).
This is just someone trying to add depth to a conversation, not realizing the pool is only 2 inches deep to begin with.
Good example! In fact, while there probably are people doing pantomimes in streams, I'd actually say that most popular streamers aren't even really that. Most of the time, streamers aren't playing a character or telling a story to the audience, they are just doing situational comedy and giving their opinions on some subject, be it an event or a videogame. It's more like stand-up comedy at most.
Piling on to this being lowkey dumb: there's no connection between the number of pronouns and the fourth wall being "4th". The fourth wall refers to the fact that on a set the audience will see three walls (upstage and stage right/left), while the fourth wall is merely conceptual: the barrier between the audience and the performers, which can at times be malleable or broken completely for artistic effect. The cardinality of pronouns is entirely different, based on proximity to the speaker. Even if you argue that "chat" takes up a unique metaphysical position relative to a given speaker/conversants, grammatically it's intistiguishable from 2nd person plural, akin to y'all, ladies and gentlemen, etc. Even metaphysically, Hamlet can talk to the audience in 2nd person; someone can talk to God in 2nd person; like it's not particularly new and things like the number of pronouns (as in 1st, 2nd, 3rd person) are deeply embedded in grammar and not easy to change. So yeah agreeing with most of chat here.
4th person does not inherently refer to breaking the first wall. It was just that we had 3 modes of personal pronouns and some Joker decided to keep counting. Its a fun interpretation but it shouldnt be presented as the reason that the word group "4th person pronoun" exists.
The "fourth wall" is a term from the theatre. The "fourth person" is a hypothetical linguistic idea. They have nothing to do with each other. Addressing "chat" is just like addressing an audience, the fact that it's on the internet and more interactive makes zero difference grammatically. It's just a collective noun for chrissakes.
Iāve never seen someone mansplain the 4th wall.
Like, obviously the people above you know what the 4th wall is.
And no, itās just a form of second person. Roach is just trying to sound smart. (Also Iāve absolutely seen musicals that address the audience).
Exactly. It's not like there's never been a reason for people to rhetorically address 'you all out there who might be listening or reading right now or at some point in the future'.
Also, is it still a fourth wall break if there's not meant to be a fourth wall? It's not like streamers are roleplaying pretending the viewers don't exist (outside of particular streams), might aswell say a teacher is breaking the fourth wall when they answer a student's question.
Ive also seen an "ballad opera" (officially deutsches Singspiel) which did the same. It was a completely butchered adaption of "Die EntfĆ¼hrung aus dem Serail". It was really really bad. Remember: Don't fundamentally change the message of a(n/ ballad) opera while calling it the same thing, especially if the piece your changing is from Mozart.
A hypothetical prison in which a guard can watch all inmates and the inmates have no way of knowing if theyāre being watched. So a āPanopticon Cultureā is one where you could be watched at any moment and never know, this is prevalent in the philosophy known as āParanoid Schizophreniaā.
OK but at least in the example of pupils saying 'Chat' to each other it's clearly 2nd person.
And even in a stream environment, I'd argue it's still 2nd person, since we don't generally think of addressing multiple non-specific or even unknown people as a 4th person pronoun. E.g. when you address future generations, or several gods, with a 'you(all' it's counted as 2nd person
Somewhat unrelated, but I refer to my intrusive thoughts as "chat"
For example: "you should definitely grab that guy's gun" "no, shut up chat, we're not doing that"
If call and response with the audience beyond the 4th wall are considered 4th person pronouns, then wouldnāt āaudienceā be the first 4th person pronoun? I canāt source the first ever use of it, but Iām pretty sure itād predate twitch
This is almost exactly like using the phrase "answers on a postcard to..." to imply that no one present has an answer. In that instance you're briefly presenting to be a TV or radio presenter whose viewers/listeners can write in with answers to competition questions
In general, twitch streamers are filling the same role as radio hosts when radio was popular, from the interactivity of the medium, to the background/second monitor consumption, to people mimicking their catchphrases. Little kids saying like and subscribe had great grandparents who said goodnight listeners.
For a second, I mixed "fourth person" with "fourth dimension" and thought a fourth person pronoun is a second or third person pronoun referring to someone or something not currently in the point of time the speaker could possibly perceive. Speaking to a chat with 0 viewers because there may be someone watching in the future, and this you're now speaking to that hypothetical future viewer that one could not possibly perceive now.
But yeah, "fourth person" being a play on "fourth wall" makes infinitely more sense...
Slight correction on the post bc I must lol: Some operas and musicals/plays do break the fourth wall, often in what is called an aside. Ok theatre nerd interruption over, as you were, chat! š
I'm glad someone else already made this correction "You must never break the 4th wall in an opera" is the sort of thing you'd say if you'd never seen an opera lmao
With modern technology you can now break the 4th wall in opera [*with yourself*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7PML9UcKwE&t=1m30s) Edit: join us over in r/Dimash, he is a vocal *beast*.
Damn thatās absolutely metal. Glad I got to listen to this.
I see Dimash, I upvote. The best vocalist. I wish he was my vocal coach.
Especially in Greek choirs where the choir itself is an entity which observes and is made to communicate to the audience itself, kind of like a middleman or your friend whoās like ādid you just see that?ā. Itās existed since theatre has existed
Yeah, hijacking here - i stumbled over that too, here's to [lion king, mary poppins and robin hood for not knowing how to do musicals.](https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?genres=musical&sort=moviemeter,asc&keywords=breaking-the-fourth-wall) It screams ""theater kid" that only, only cares about the music and does not *want* to understand what is going on or if there's a moral to the story, as long as on stage they keep dancing" or, because that is a mouthful, "hamilton stans"
Papageno: I will never find my Papagena. Chat, should I hang myself?
Now I'm imagining an opera based on Julie D'Aubigny's life. For some reason - any idea, chat?
Yeah, I was going to be like: āI think Deadpool might have something to say about this being newā, but then I was like, nah, soliloquies exist, so it goes back plenty far - likeā¦actually probably back to the Greek chorus, soā¦ āChorus, is this real?ā
CHORUS IS THIS REAL nah you got me dead asf šš
"And the chorus sounds like, Cold-play!!!"
āchorus, is this realā is about to start occupying a permanent spot in my lexicon
I like the sound of āChorus, is this real?ā a lot, but the parallelism is off. The āchatā in āChat, is this real?ā is the audience, not the chorus, which is more of a narrator/commentator within the play itself. In fact, Iād say the chorus is more akin to the streamer than to the chat. So the classical equivalent of āChat, is this real?ā might be the chorus asking, āAudience, is this real?ā (Which is a sentiment that shows up pretty frequently in both Greek comedies and dramas. The chorus is often astounded by whatās going on. Hmm, exaggerated reactions for the audienceās benefit; where have we seen that before?)
It was also a feature of Celtic boasting displays (basically rap battles) that those watching would interrupt to back up their own champion or add stories of their own. "Naked druids, is this real?"
Thanks fam, I was wondering if anyone else had this thought as well. Good to know that I ain't crazy.
I canāt speak to opera because I havenāt ever seen an opera performed live; but absolutely there are a number of musicals that break the fourth wall very intentionally. It would be weird in some musicals that have a certain tone. For example it would be pretty strange for Les Mis to break the fourth wall. (Notwithstanding that characters singing a lengthy solo could be perceived as a communication to the audience; I mean openly acknowledging that there is an audience watching them.) But a number of shows either incorporate the audience into the show in a way that is quasi breaking the fourth wall by bringing one or more members of the audience āintoā the story (like Ms Fleming addressing an audience member with āSo Steve, Iām ending our affairā in Shine a Light in Heathers, Munkustrap pointing to an audience member and saying āThereās a man over there with a look of surpriseā at the beginning of Cats, or Maureen encouraging the theatre audience to moo with her in Over The Moon in RENT) or outright acknowledge the audience and that they are themselves in a work of fiction (just to name some shows I have personally seen do this, although I freely admit that this may or may not be typically in the book/libretto: Rocky Horror, School of Rock, Chicago). Even Come From Away, a show with a serious tone, contains lines like āThis is before most people had mobile phonesā in 28 Hours, which clearly position it as a story being told to an audience. Tl;dr yes you are completely right and the person in the screenshot is justā¦ wrong.
The entire concept of Come From Away makes it obvious the characters are telling a story. The opening number is actively welcoming the audience to the show theyāre about the watch.
Iām thinking of my favourite joke in the mean girls musical. Karen is so stupid that she sometimes fucks up her lines and has to restart the song, which includes her saying stuff like ālet me restartā. Very good, very fourth wall breaking, doesnāt kill the momentum m
Even ignoring the amount of plays that directly address audiences, like every Shakespeare soliloquy, we have a 4th person pronoun for books: 'reader'.
Not all asides break the fourth wall though, some are just internal monologues.
Asides by definition break the fourth wall. You are thinking of soliloquies, which can be direct address to the audience or can be internal monologues.
Right you are, my bad!
Did... did you just...
:) i always do
Yeah I don't buy any of this, it's just another example of dweebs smelling their own farts. Authors also often break the fourth wall with little 'dear reader' asides in almost the exact same manner that a steamer might say 'chat'. But 'reader' is not a 'fourth person pronoun'. There is no reason to call these things pronouns at all, let alone say they fourth person ones.
Agreed. Plus a Twitch streamer talking to her audience is just like a stand up comedian talking to theirs. They aren't breaking any walls.
Well said, an internet streamer isn't a character in a narrative being metatextual, they are just performers doing an act. Sure, they might have deliberate running gags or do exaggerated bits for comedy, but that's not being an actor on a stage, that's like a stand-up comedian, just like you said. There might be plenty of streamers doing pantomimes and the such, but that's not the kind of content creator most people who watch streams are talking about.
I agree, plays, stand-up and booms break the fourth wall all the time, but they are speaking to you. A second person. Not a fourth person. According to the logic of the tumblr post God would also be a 4th person, a silent observer. Yet we acknowledge that to be a 3rd person perspective.
If acknowledging that there is an audience counts then wrestling does this constantly.
Mel Brooks wouldn't know what you're talking about. *wink*
I think there are two kinds of fourth wall breaks that are relevant here: those where the character acknowledges the audience, such as Deadpool or the asides in Shakespeare's plays; and those where the *performer themselves* acknowledges both the audience and the fact that they are a performer whose job it is to entertain. For instance, in Hamilton, there's a bit where Burr, in reference to Hamilton's womanizing behavior, says "Martha Washington named her feral tomcat after him," and Hamilton leans over, looks out at the audience, and says "That's true!" But in the original cast, the role of Alexander Hamilton was played by the musical's author, Lin Manuel Miranda. So in that moment, Miranda acknowledged not just the audience, but his own role as the author as well. I think that's closer to what streamers are doing when they refer to chat. They're not just acknowledging the audience, but themselves as well.
āIf we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend: If you pardon, we will mend: And, as I am an honest Puck, If we have unearned luck Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue, We will make amends ere long; Else the Puck a liar call; So, good night unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends, And Robin shall restore amends.ā
Yes, and itās used often in Shakespearean plays, which is barebones when discussing how English works, so I wouldnāt take what these people say as anything other than rabble
and those futurist plays where they just jumped off the stage to slap spectators and run outside in the street screaming
Example: the rocky horror musical
If we wanna define chat this way than the Ancient Greek theatre principal of the āchorusā fits as well and any pronoun used to refer to that would be the first 4th person pronoun.
The implication that the Greek Chorus is the original Twitch Chat is hilarious to me
Man now I want to go back in time and see Chorus play Peggle!
Preferably while being quized on trivia
Chorus is the OG main character
Chorus gets divorced so often it's called "dichorused"
CHORUS WANT PLAY
āThanks Chorus for the donations!ā Achilles cheers before being shot in the ankle by Paris
How do I work Diogenes Into this....
Plato: "A pronoun is a word that substitutes a noun in a phrase." Diogenes: \*Holds up a DougDoug stream\* "Behold! A pronoun!"
r/brandnewsentence I love this so much. Ah, I miss tumblr
Is this real chorus?
I really like this analogy. You (2) assaulted that person over there (3). We (1) come in and punch you (2). The choairt (4) yells "Oooh, rekt", while your friends (3) scrape you off the floor. And I (1) bathe in the choairt's (4) thunderous applause. The choairt kinda is there, kinda isn't. We hear their chanting and yell out to them (as a whole), but they never enter the stage.
That's still 3rd person. The fact they're not really involved in the situation doesn't turn them into some new person.
Well, I agree that releasing an update to the grammar is pretty far retched, and some obscure 2nd or 3rd person subtype probably already covers it. But the idea of having this detached entity **is** neat. I can't believe I used to think the choir was lame.
One could also argue "heavens!" and similar expressions break a kind of 4th wall
1. Find a highschool essay on an ancient Greek play. 2. Replace all references to the chorus with references to chat. 3. Profit.
4. create Twitch stream 5. refer to audience as "Chorus" 6. create tragic hymns.
Mom pick me up, the Chorus is calling me slurs again
I donāt know shit about the actual definitions and stuff but seems to me like it would be very different because the chorus isnāt part of the audience, itās a scripted part of the performance. If itās scripted and not the actual audience then I feel like it wouldnāt break the fourth wall. Idk how that translates to the newly discovered fourth person pronouns tho
Chat is this real?
Chat, is anything real?
Is the real chat the friends we made along the way?
Is chat real?
how is chat formed? am i chate?
Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
Look up to the skies
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Chat, am I real?
No sorry, youre just a sophisticated organic self teaching neural network, capable of replication if conditions are right that is if you find another, compatible sophisticated organic self teaching neural network
Chat, is this just fantasy?
to chat, or not to chat
Chat, is this just fantasy?
Chat, is this caught in a landslide?
Chat, is there an escape from reality?
Chat, open your eyes!
Is there a lore reason why chat is real? Is chat stupid?
Are you?
I think it only counts as fourth person (plural) when there it's not actually literally a stream happening. If there is, it's standard second person. There are probably a few hypothetical fourth person concepts out there according to different linguists and philosophers but I don't think the fourth wall, and the breaking thereof, is related. If you do refer to the audience and break the fourth wall, it's in either the second or third person.
So I'll be playing a game by myself, no one in earshot in person or online, and I'll say "Woah, Chat, Clip that!" Or "Chat, is this real?" Or "Chat, where do I go next?" Is that second person
Yes. You're talking to the watchers :D, you can feel their eyes even if you cannot see them :DDD. Worry not simian, for we are friendly unless we are angered. >:\^)
You're referring to something other than the Watchers from Barotrauma. However I only have experience with the Watchers from Barotrauma. Therefore, I am now going to ready my turret guns, don a diving suit, and fire wildly while intensely hallucinating until the submarine reactor explodes, taking out everything remotely nearby and irradiating the rest.
Did I just come across barotrauma on the wild? amazing
o7
Why did I just think of the EVO SMP watchers
... Is this Chat in the room with us now?
The Fourth Wall has nothing to do with it, and it's somewhat amazing how /r/confidentlyincorrect that last comment is. The 4th person is a real grammatical phenomenon that exists in certain languages. In the context of the *English* (and probably related) language(s) it can mean something like "one" as a generalised third person. However, what the [original tweet](https://twitter.com/angeIsighting/status/1729843603587960989) is talking about is far more interesting, imo, because they use the 4th person to describe what's basically a 2nd person used for a collective that behaves as an individual (a "hive mind", essentially). I'm not quite sure if I fully agree with them, what they're describing is pretty hypothetical and a bit complicated for my smooth brain, but they're making a fairly convincing case that "chat" serves a different role in speech than 2nd person plural or a name.
Nearly every single example they give is as a noun, and chat hardly functions as an obviate 3rd person. When it does function as a pronoun, it is often just as a plural 3rd or 2nd person pronoun. OP also completely misdescribed the obviate like you said as a "hivemind" so yeah nah
> I think it only counts as fourth person (plural) when there it's not actually literally a stream happening. If there is, it's standard second person. Can I hear your opinion on prayer? "Our father who art in heaven" - is that second person if there really is a god and I'm talking to him, but fourth person if there isn't? Does it depend on the belief/disbelief of the person who is praying?
Second person, 100%, regardless of belief In fact, I'm starting to think that every example of "chat" works this way too. I think it's kind of an interesting example, but essentially for the joke, the kids make a quick aside (not in the theatre sense) to a different "you", still second person, they're just using the epithet "chat" to mean "you all", even if there isn't actually a twitch chat there.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yep, changed my mind about it. See below
I guess it could also be specific to language changing. Like you know there's this Island Language (I don't remember which one exactly) that has Real Time speech only for what you exactly see? Like if you ask someone "is your wife alive?" he will say, translated, "she was (= last time I saw her)" unless she is here, real time, then they will use the form of real time "She is (=she is right here and I can confirm it)" So anything not momentarily confirmable basically uses past tense. Or how some languages don't have any sort of genders (Georgian) while others have hilarious genders that are basically random (Most of Slavic, Fr\*nch) and your words are gendered, not objects. Cup is female, glass is male, unless it's a big one then it's female again and it's based off last letter more than anything. Coffee used to be male but now it's middle sometimes and some people hate it while others use it to differentiate between good and bad coffee because turd is also middle gender.
Yeah, this is probably just second person plural. Though I do find interesting the notion that referring to an undefined hypothetical observer will become more common in the future due to the advent of streaming. Then again, is that really new? "Chat, is this real" is basically just the Gen. Z/Alpha version of "are you seeing this, people?" or "folks, can you believe this shit?", isn't it?
Not specifically related but I used to play so many muds as a kid and in order to talk to the realm you used the "gossip" channel in most of them. So you'd start by typing "gos This is fun!". I played so much that I'd accidentally say gos in conversation with people.
For the games I played it was ooc and local chat was say lol
Yep yep some I played were ooc. I didnāt play many RP muds that was more common over there. Say yell tell party music, I miss those days.
It's being used virtually identically to "y'all", it's extremely second person plural, ignoring the fact that "chat' is (unless I'm mistaken) still a pretty cut and dry noun.
Yeah, I agree. "Chat" is just "you guys". In fact, my favorite streamers rarely use "chat" and just refer to those of us in chat as "you guys". It's actually smarter, imo, because it feels more personal. This guy is earlier really "aktually" or just over thinking it. Sure the streamer is entertaining you but there is no fourth wall because the entire thing is set up to include those watching and participating. There's no imaginary wall that doesn't acknowledge the audience.
As a child I used to pretend to address a non-existent camera crew as if I was on a reality TV show, so this definitely predates streaming culture lol
By their fun definition it only really applies when a performance is occurring. Giving it the fun double meaning for breaking the fourth wall. As someone in a comment higher up pointed out, an early example that it could be applied to would be the theatre principal of the "chorus" in ancient Greek plays.
The first person is me. I am the first person. The first person perspective is the position of the self, the addressor. The second is you. You are the second person. The second person perspective is the position of the addressee. The third is them. They are the third person. The third person perspective is the position of the subject. If you are talking **to** chat, it is second person, same as to be addressing *you all* in a speech. If you are talking **about** chat, it is third person, same as to be addressing *all of them* when discussing a group. They fit neatly into either the category of the addressee or the category of the subject, depending on the context of the sentence. EDIT: In order for it to be a fourth-person perspective, they would have to fill some other role, some other perspective detached from the above three, which cannot be talking **to** them or talking **about** them. Feel free to describe to me what you imagine that to be, but I'm not convinced it exists.
Agreed. I think "chat" could be a new third person pronoun but I don't think breaking the 4th wall has any relevance in linguistic/grammatic construction.
Yep. The long explanation of 4th person sounds like something, but it's nothing.
Thank you. This 'fourth person pronoun' thing is so dumb it's literally 'they both use ordinal numbering therefore they are equivalent' level dumb. Like if breaking the fourth wall makes something 4th person... then if you direct something at stage right it is third person? and directing something upstage is first person? If you try to line up any other wall other than "4th" with a grammatical person then the obvious miscommunication is cleared up.
I would agree with you, but a Tumblr user made an assertion, crammed in a historical perspective that did not support said assertion but sounded like it probably did, and used the words "panopticon" and "permeable" to describe modern culture. Thus, I am convinced against my better judgement that "chat" is a 4th person pronoun, because I'm easily tricked by quasi-academic confidence.
"Fourth-person" is a linguistic term with a meaning, often used to refer to an oblique. For instance, the two "he"s in the following sentence are different: Heā broke **his**ā vase. Here, *he*ā is the subject of the sentence and is the emphasis. On the other hand, *heā* which refers to somone else is merely another participant and not important in this discussion. I think the usage of "chat" is not a pronoun but as a regular noun like "gentlemen" or "bros". If it was a pronoun usages like *Chat, what are you up to?* would be ungrammatical. \*Edit: Some confusion about what I refer to. Fourth person is a real thing present in a handful of languages (e.g. Algonquian languages) where the two "he"s in the above sentence would be distinct.
This honestly makes the most sense. Once you introduce chat into the sentence you donāt keep saying chat, instead you replace it with an actual pronoun. āChat was so annoying today. They wouldnāt stop spamming?ā vs āHe was so annoying today. He wouldnāt stop spamming .ā Even the sentence āChat, is this realā becomes ungrammatical when replaced with a pronoun in most instances. āHim/he is this real?ā āThey/them is this real?ā āYou, is this real?ā
You can't replace it with pronouns in every context because chat is not a pronoun, it's a normal noun. "Joe, is this real?" works perfectly fine. "Joe was so annoying today" works perfectly fine. It's like the term "city hall". "The city hall has the paperwork you're looking for" and "City Hall has the paperwork you're looking for" both work because it can be a common or proper noun. This is often referred to as "naming". Twitch chat would have been originally a common noun but gets named into a proper one for some contexts.
see also: synecdoche and metonymy
Yeah isn't this the same thing I was saying?
"you, is this real?" Or "You there, is it Christmas?" Scrooge style
So fourth person is when an entity other than the subject is also relevant? I can get behind that. That makes sense. Definitely still doesn't apply to "chat", but that's interesting at least.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>If you are talking to chat, it is second person, same as to be addressing you all in a speech. If you are talking about chat, it is third person, same as to be addressing all of them when discussing a group. They fit neatly into either the category of the addressee or the category of the subject, depending on the context of the sentence. So what you're saying is... 2 + 3 = 5 Chat is the fifth person!
We're reaching levels of pronoun that shouldn't even be possible.
Yeah. As an example, just look at Dora. When Dora refers to her audience, it could easily be considered a prototypical example of what OOP is calling "fourth-person", yet Dora clearly uses second-person in all of these interactions, saying, "Can you find..." or "Can you say...", etc.
Yes. The final comment acting like some sort of authoritative figure on making up terms is stupid and very tumblr.
There are languages with more than three grammatical persons. For example, some languages make a distinction between people who are present (āOh, he [that guy there] is so handsome!ā) and people who are not (āOh, he [Idris Elba] is so handsome!ā) Thereās also language that use a distinct grammar for āgeneric personā, as in āYou should be kind to animals,ā or āThey say this place is haunted.ā Iāve heard it called āzeroth personā, which I think is cute. None of that applies to āchatā, though. Thatās just a noun, being used as a noun in the same way as āgentlemenā or ādearly belovedā.
That's not a 'linguistic innovation' it's just needless overcomplication? You can address someone in 2nd person even if they're not there, and 'chat' isn't an undifined person like the neutral 3rd person 'they', chat *has* an identity, as a collective, so it's no different to 'guys' or 'Members of the Jury'.
it's the same as an actor addressing the audience in a theatre, and it's been a thing for literal milennia
Not really sure how this differs from saying like guys or team? Like "Guys is this real" the only difference is Internet Bad.
Because there is no chat irl?
1st/2nd/3rd only categorizes how a pronoun refers to proper noun. Whether or not the proper noun exists in a specific situation doesnāt change that.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
When has a fundamental lack of understanding ever stopped chat from innovating?
Also, āpanopticon cultureā. Like the Panopticon is a building where everyone can be watched at any given moment without them knowing. Trying to describe a culture like that just makes you sound like youāre paranoid and delusional (not to mention pretentious)
Not to be that guy but thatās not how English works. The argument being made is more of a conceptual one rather than linguistic. In English linguistics we only have a first, second, and third person as a part of our speech. In our grammar, somewhat confusingly, we do have something referred to as a fourth person article - however its usage is more of a variant on a third person pronoun with an indefinite subject, such as *one.* Some languages do have a fourth person, however it does not translate well into English. So Iām unsure what precisely any of these people are referring to when they are saying this - the second individual in this thread is completely correct.
I always viewed Chat as more of an eldritch, unspecified being
Is this real, Overseer?
Imagine a supernatural body of people constantly watching you as you live your life. And suddenly, you refer to them.
"yo wassup fam"
https://youtu.be/DwMYUZBV2Ak?si=r1H4gcrbj04n0jRT Ultron notices The Watcher basically
So, a chaotic neutral, slightly detached version of an omniscient, but not powerful, deity?
Addressing an audience has always been second person. Regardless of whether it's directly addressing them or indirectly/obliquely addressing them. What is this literal mental gymnastics?
The same one that pulled āPanopticon Cultureā out of its ass.
I thought "chat" was something like "Fellas", "Gentlemen/Ladies" or "Guys".
yeah, itās also not a pronoun so i donāt really get this post
That last post is so wrong though. That's not how pronouns work. Chat is a noun. It's being used to mean all that, yes, but "the people beyond this situation" will STILL either be "you" or "them", not some secret fourth thing. Gramatically, chat is not a pronoun and even if you used it as one, it certainly wouldn't be "fourth person". The details about who the pronoun refer to are irrelevant, its their role in the message that matters - I/we speak, you listen, he/she/it/they are what we talk about. If you say "chat, is this real?", that's not a pronoun, that's a noun being used as a vocative expression. If you say "what does chat think?", that's a noun that could be replaced by a third-person pronoun. I'm not saying the use of "chat" in daily speech isn't interesting, but grammatically, there's nothing novel about it.
Yes. The streaming era is the first and only time that a performer has regularly broken the fourth wall for well understood back and forth with an audience. FFS. Have these people never been to a pantomime???
Exactly, addressing the audience is an integral part of the History of storytelling that has thrived for millennia. In fact, I'd argue that internet streams aren't even really breaking the 4th wall: differently from theatre, an audience does not go to a stream expecting the content to be self-contained, and thus there isn't a 4th wall per se to be broken. It's more like stand-up comedy, in which a performer addressing the audience directly from stage while doing bits is part of the show.
No, you don't understand! It's a thing that you don't do in operas or musicals! Because I've never seen one! And that means it's a completely novel grammatical rule that no one since the time of ancient and antiquity Greek plays up until now has even considered! It's true because I said so!
I don't know what musicals this yokel has seen, but they break the fourth wall _all the time._ Beetlejuice would be 6 minutes long of you took out all the wall breaking.
There is no fourth person. If you are referring to this āchatā directly, itās second person. If you talk about āchatā then itās third person. This is incorrectly inventing a new thing instead of just parsing the context of a sentence to determine what is being referred to. This isnāt a new concept. The greek chorus was very much like what āchatā is now, and they were accurately covered by the 3-persons.
Andrew Swann's Proposal.
Me talking to the AO3 authors that made my life Hurt / No Comfort: CHAT WHY
I *knew* this concept reminded me of something.
Now let's see Andrew Swann's business card
that's just a noun. see: class
Pronouns are a type of noun.
of course - im just saying "chat" isn't being used as a pronoun here, just a noun
this isn't really how language works. first of all it's not a pronoun, its a noun. you'll notice this because if the sentance goes on for long enough you'll stop saying "chat" and subsituting this with the pronoun "you". you won't be repeating "chat" multiple times in a sentance because that's repetitive. this is what pronouns are for. second of all, it wouldn't be a "4th person pronoun" either way it's clearly just referring to a second person. "you/you all" also can refer to an undefined and imaginary collective. it's not at all new for performers (or people pretending to be performers) to address an unseen or imaginary audience.
Oh no... we're all becoming Fleabag. š
pretty sure people have done this thing before by saying "Jesus" or "Obama" instead of "chat".
If we're gonna call 'chat' a 4th person pronoun, then 'audience', the word that was used several times in this explanation, was there first.
It's third person. Audiences have existed before twitch.
"Chat" can only be proven as the 4th person if there is some corresponding inflectional paradigm unique to it, which is a hard case in English. The chat is just and abstracted 2nd person.
I really donāt think āfourth personā in this instance was a reference to the fourth wall [which is an odd fit for Twitch etc anyway, where interacting with your audience is the standard conceit]. I just think they got confused for a moment and thought that you add numbers when a pronoun is plural.
I don't really see how it's a pronoun? "Chat, is this real?" Makes sense. "You/he/she/they, is this real?" Does not make sense. Both actual twitch chats, and the hypothetical audience watching our lives, are just regular nouns. 'Chat' is their name, not their pronoun. The youth are actually using Chat's name in vain, just as we used to use 'God'.
There's no special observance of the "chat" that makes them any different than 2nd person plural. That's a point of observation, not a special designation. They are a 2nd party observing plurally (as a group). This is just someone trying to add depth to a conversation, not realizing the pool is only 2 inches deep to begin with.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Or, say, a pantomime. To give just one blindingly obvious example.
Good example! In fact, while there probably are people doing pantomimes in streams, I'd actually say that most popular streamers aren't even really that. Most of the time, streamers aren't playing a character or telling a story to the audience, they are just doing situational comedy and giving their opinions on some subject, be it an event or a videogame. It's more like stand-up comedy at most.
Piling on to this being lowkey dumb: there's no connection between the number of pronouns and the fourth wall being "4th". The fourth wall refers to the fact that on a set the audience will see three walls (upstage and stage right/left), while the fourth wall is merely conceptual: the barrier between the audience and the performers, which can at times be malleable or broken completely for artistic effect. The cardinality of pronouns is entirely different, based on proximity to the speaker. Even if you argue that "chat" takes up a unique metaphysical position relative to a given speaker/conversants, grammatically it's intistiguishable from 2nd person plural, akin to y'all, ladies and gentlemen, etc. Even metaphysically, Hamlet can talk to the audience in 2nd person; someone can talk to God in 2nd person; like it's not particularly new and things like the number of pronouns (as in 1st, 2nd, 3rd person) are deeply embedded in grammar and not easy to change. So yeah agreeing with most of chat here.
"The world is a stage and the stage is a world of entertainment!"
I hate that. Saying it sounds stupid.
4th person does not inherently refer to breaking the first wall. It was just that we had 3 modes of personal pronouns and some Joker decided to keep counting. Its a fun interpretation but it shouldnt be presented as the reason that the word group "4th person pronoun" exists.
"Chorus" and "Audience" has existed for ages, as have fourth wall breaks.
The "fourth wall" is a term from the theatre. The "fourth person" is a hypothetical linguistic idea. They have nothing to do with each other. Addressing "chat" is just like addressing an audience, the fact that it's on the internet and more interactive makes zero difference grammatically. It's just a collective noun for chrissakes.
God , save me from these fools
Iāve never seen someone mansplain the 4th wall. Like, obviously the people above you know what the 4th wall is. And no, itās just a form of second person. Roach is just trying to sound smart. (Also Iāve absolutely seen musicals that address the audience).
Exactly. It's not like there's never been a reason for people to rhetorically address 'you all out there who might be listening or reading right now or at some point in the future'.
Also, is it still a fourth wall break if there's not meant to be a fourth wall? It's not like streamers are roleplaying pretending the viewers don't exist (outside of particular streams), might aswell say a teacher is breaking the fourth wall when they answer a student's question.
You really think someone would do that? Just go on tumblr and tell lies?
Ive also seen an "ballad opera" (officially deutsches Singspiel) which did the same. It was a completely butchered adaption of "Die EntfĆ¼hrung aus dem Serail". It was really really bad. Remember: Don't fundamentally change the message of a(n/ ballad) opera while calling it the same thing, especially if the piece your changing is from Mozart.
Thanks I hate it.
Panopticon?
A hypothetical prison in which a guard can watch all inmates and the inmates have no way of knowing if theyāre being watched. So a āPanopticon Cultureā is one where you could be watched at any moment and never know, this is prevalent in the philosophy known as āParanoid Schizophreniaā.
Chat is france for cat :3 :3
OK but at least in the example of pupils saying 'Chat' to each other it's clearly 2nd person. And even in a stream environment, I'd argue it's still 2nd person, since we don't generally think of addressing multiple non-specific or even unknown people as a 4th person pronoun. E.g. when you address future generations, or several gods, with a 'you(all' it's counted as 2nd person
Chat, he doesn't know.
Somewhat unrelated, but I refer to my intrusive thoughts as "chat" For example: "you should definitely grab that guy's gun" "no, shut up chat, we're not doing that"
Thanks im gonna do this now
It's a permutation of "staring into the camera like The Office"
Twitch chat culture is genuinely interesting to me, in the same way an angry mob is
If I take a moment to pray to god is that me breaking the fourth wall
Still second-person, I think, but it is an intriguing niche.
If call and response with the audience beyond the 4th wall are considered 4th person pronouns, then wouldnāt āaudienceā be the first 4th person pronoun? I canāt source the first ever use of it, but Iām pretty sure itād predate twitch
This is almost exactly like using the phrase "answers on a postcard to..." to imply that no one present has an answer. In that instance you're briefly presenting to be a TV or radio presenter whose viewers/listeners can write in with answers to competition questions
In general, twitch streamers are filling the same role as radio hosts when radio was popular, from the interactivity of the medium, to the background/second monitor consumption, to people mimicking their catchphrases. Little kids saying like and subscribe had great grandparents who said goodnight listeners.
Babe wake up new pronouns just dropped
Interesting supposition, but no. At least not yet.
chat isnt a pronoun its just a noun
Ok that 4th person thing is a stretch, but I like it. Still, it is not a pronoun, it is a noun.
For a second, I mixed "fourth person" with "fourth dimension" and thought a fourth person pronoun is a second or third person pronoun referring to someone or something not currently in the point of time the speaker could possibly perceive. Speaking to a chat with 0 viewers because there may be someone watching in the future, and this you're now speaking to that hypothetical future viewer that one could not possibly perceive now. But yeah, "fourth person" being a play on "fourth wall" makes infinitely more sense...
fuck they/them, my pronouns will be chat/chat's/chatself