My name is Daniel Plainview. I am driven and goal-oriented, and I endeavor to forge new possibilities in alternative energy.

August 8, 2009 6:28 AM

In There Will Be Blood, Daniel Plainview delivers the line: "I have a competition in me." Could this be described as grammatically correct, strictly speaking? Or is it idiomatic, but not strictly correct? Is Plainview saying, essentially, "I have a [sense of] competition in me," a sentence that, were it to be spelled out as such, would lose its rhetorical punch? Could it be argued as a case of poetic metonymy or something of the kind?

Or is this question indicative of a hypercorrect mindset, akin to pointing out the fallacy in "Woe is me" (which is, incidentally, both idiomatically and grammatically correct, as it uses the dative form "me," implying "woe is [unto] me")?

posted by Busoni to writing & language (27 comments total)

It's grammatically correct:

I [subject] have [verb] a competition [direction object] in me [prepositional phrase].
posted by grumblebee at 6:41 AM on August 8

It is not "decent" speech--competition if thought of as between two or more people. It does work however since it suggests a soul at conflict with itself, ie, two things competing within and one of which might win out or destroy the other.
posted by Postroad at 6:41 AM on August 8

I remember that line. As I heard it he means "I have a competitiveness in me" basically. He can't stop trying to best everyone else.

Compare to I have a striving in me, I have a yearning in me, I have a great anger inside me, etc. It's not a typical thing to say, it sounds to me somewhat lofty and poetic, but the grammar is fine. The only quibble would be about whether "competition" can be used to describe an emotion; but if you decide that it's an incorrect use of the word, then you could just say it's a metaphor. The form I have an [emotion] inside me is fine, the form I have an [event] in me would be more metaphorical, like: I have a race inside me; I have a riot inside me; I have a storm inside me, etc.
posted by creasy boy at 6:56 AM on August 8

I have a longing inside me. I have a hunger deep in my heart I have a competition in me.

Sounds fine to me.
posted by rokusan at 7:10 AM on August 8

What grumblebee said--it's a pretty simple sentence structure.

(Whether it's grammatically correct and whether it makes sense are two different questions.)
posted by box at 7:24 AM on August 8

I haven't seen the movie (so I really should just shut up) but because this interested me I searched out the bit of dialogue online...

Plainview: Are you an angry man, Henry?
Henry Brands: About what?
Plainview: Are you envious? Do you get envious?
Henry Brands: I don't think so. No.
Plainview: I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
Henry Brands: That part of me is gone... working and not succeeding- all my failures has left me... I just don't... care.
Plainview: Well, if it's in me, it's in you. There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone.
...

Before I read the dialogue I thought the phrase "I have a competition in me" would mean "I am capable of winning {something}". Often in sports it's used, in horse racing for instance "{name of horse} has a top-class race in them".

After reading the dialogue he's not using the phrase like that.
posted by selton at 7:27 AM on August 8

So not in the context of the script, but couldn't it be seen as you'd say "there's a competition in that stadium"? Competitions can be nouns that happen inside of other things, no?

I'm not a grammarian. That might already be obvious. But that's how I read it.
posted by sully75 at 8:12 AM on August 8

Incidentally the distinction to be made is grammatical vs. semantic correctness.
posted by katrielalex at 8:13 AM on August 8

It seems like perfectly decent speech to me, but then that may be another English/American language divide. And after all, Plainview is speaking something that is intended to be closer to classic English than what Americans speak nowadays.
posted by opsin at 8:21 AM on August 8

It means "I'm a very competitive person." It was just a throwaway line. He recited the line that way for effect. The guy is a great actor. No need to over-analyze.
posted by Zambrano at 8:29 AM on August 8

I read these suggestions. I have a heartburn in me. Grammatical?
posted by Postroad at 8:49 AM on August 8

It's the article "a" that makes it strange. You wouldn't blink at someone saying "I have competition in me." "A competition" makes it sound like he's got a soccer game in his belly. In context the meaning is clear, but your instinct is correct: it reads to me as an attempt by the screenwriter to lend a pseudo-grandeur to the line through fake olde-timeyness.
posted by Bookhouse at 9:30 AM on August 8

Grammatical?

Look, it's a pretty famous fact that a sentence doesn't need to make sense to be grammatically correct. This was summarized pretty succinctly by Chomsky, who proposed the sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". This sentence is grammatically correct, but completely nonsensical.

This question seems to arise from a misunderstanding that there's some fixed relationship between grammaticality and sense.
posted by mr_roboto at 9:37 AM on August 8 [4 favorites]

It may be that Day-Lewis accidentally didn't recite the line as written--it might have been "I have a sense of competition in me" or "I have a commitment to competition in me" or something that might be more ordinary English syntax.

Or it may be that the screenwriter used convoluted syntax to indicate the convoluted nature of the character's personality.

Or it may be that Day-Lewis purposefully changed the line, again to convey the weirdness of the weird character.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:36 AM on August 8

That colourless sentence was actually designed to refute the probablistic model for language. But yes, it does work as good example of grammar-abiding nonsense.
posted by Cantdosleepy at 11:39 AM on August 8

Could this be described as grammatically correct, strictly speaking?

Yes.
posted by signal at 1:52 PM on August 8

both idiomatically and grammatically correct

You're confused as to the meaning of "grammatic" and "idiomatic". "

"Grammatic" doesn't mean "proper" or "academic", but rather to the way the components of speach are put together to constitute language. Not the "proper" way, etc., but rather the actual way people use language.

"Idiomatic" refers to the way a certain group of people speak. Not "common" or "regular" people, any group of people.
posted by signal at 1:58 PM on August 8

Plainview has a distinctive way of speaking-- a little stilted, even compared to the other characters, and yet forceful. It's an effective way of establishing the character.

I think what's striking about this line is that it's pared to the bone-- there's not an extraneous syllable. Colloquially, people rarely talk like that; we'd say something like I've got this huge sense of competitiveness inside me. That would sound more natural, but that wasn't the screenwriter's goal.
posted by zompist at 2:26 PM on August 8

I might actually lean towards it being incorrect usage, though gramatically correct as noted above. When someone says "I have a race in me" they are more often than not referring to a specific race, and only one. Same with 'I have a riot in me'. It indicates that once the event is over, a degree of satiation or exhaustion will follow. It should be noted that this is different from more abstract nouns like 'a darkness'

To say 'I have a competition in me' (as distinct from an abstract noun like 'a darkness') when what one is trying to indicate is a competitive streak or general competitiveness seems wrong - a confusion of the meaning of "I have competition in my blood" and the usual way of expressing "I have sufficient wherewithal for one further competition"

I'm not much of a linguist, though, so that's just my impression.
posted by Sparx at 2:30 PM on August 8

@katrielalex: Isn't semantic concerned more with meaning, though? The audience knows more or less what Daniel Plainview is trying to convey. My niggling question has more to do with the formal mechanics of the sentence, and whether sentences similar to it occur in common usage. "I have a water in me" is grammatically correct but neither meaningful nor idiomatic; "I might could" is grammatically incorrect but is idiomatic and meaningful. ("I could care less" might be an example of a phrase that's grammatically correct and idiomatic but lacking in semantic logic, maybe?)
posted by Busoni at 2:30 PM on August 8

Isn't semantic concerned more with meaning, though? The audience knows more or less what Daniel Plainview is trying to convey.

Yes, but the issue is still whether the sentence is semantically correct. The audience can understand what Plainview means to convey without his sentence actually meaning that. When someone says "Could you please pass the salt?", they are asking to be passed the salt, but that is not part of the semantic meaning of the sentence. The request is pragmatically implied. (If you had said "yes" but not passed the salt, you'd be responding to the question semantically expressed but ignoring the request pragmatically expressed.)

There's nothing wrong with his sentence grammatically, the audience understands what he means pragmatically, and I'm almost positive that in Plainview's dialect the sentence is semantically felicitous. I doubt the screenwriters would have included a line like that unless they had evidence that people of the time period spoke like that. If it sounds weird to you, that's because you're speaking a different dialect of English. There's no higher authority of linguistic correctness to appeal to, sorry.
posted by painquale at 3:50 PM on August 8

I'm almost positive that in Plainview's dialect the sentence is semantically felicitous. I doubt the screenwriters would have included a line like that unless they had evidence that people of the time period spoke like that. If it sounds weird to you, that's because you're speaking a different dialect of English.

Without a cite, I wouldn't be so sure. Screenwriters are typically happy to fudge things if it sounds better. Nobody mistakes the film for a documentary.
posted by Bookhouse at 4:04 PM on August 8

My personal reading is that using a word like competitiveness wouldn't be sufficient to describe Plainview's drive. That sounds like something that can wax and wane, that can be stimulated to activity by something else. A competition sounds more like an all-consuming aspect of his being.

Grammatically, it seems to be correct. The word is a synonym for rivalry, and substituting rivalry sounds more natural, but that's just because sometimes the similar words of different origin in English are used in slightly different ways.

I note that one of the definitions of competition is specific to ecology: The simultaneous demand by two or more organisms for limited environmental resources, such as nutrients, living space, or light. That sounds much like Plainview's life-and-death, you-or-me outlook.
posted by dhartung at 5:23 PM on August 8

I doubt the screenwriters would have included a line like that unless they had evidence that people of the time period spoke like that.

HA HA HA HA oh my sides.

You are talking about the industry that brought us Krakatoa: East of Java.


Daniel Plainview talks weird. "I drink your milkshake!" isn't something anyone else would say, any more than "I have a competition in me" is. He's a weird man. He uses language very approximately. It's part of his character.

It isn't idiomatic for the turn-of-the-century US. It isn't the way the protagonist of Upton Sinclair's novel Oil talks. It's a unique and bizarre way of speaking that heightens the sense of this character as a loner cut off from society.
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:55 PM on August 8 [1 favorite]

You're right, Bookhouse. Maybe it's not historically accurate (who knows?); I was being too presumptive. Anyway, it's still a semantic issue; not grammatical or pragmatic. And semantic facts are nebulous and relative to communities---in his little community of one, he's using the word correctly. There's really no way to criticize him for not being correct.
posted by painquale at 6:24 PM on August 8

Non-linguistic film nerd datapoint: Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day Lewis are both known for being obsessive about the smallest details so it is highly unlikely that for one of the few seminal monologues in the film they would have settled for 'close enough, that will do'. It is extremely likely that they had this very conversation.
posted by slimepuppy at 6:32 AM on August 9

For what it's worth, the sentence doesn't sound weird to me on any level, be it grammatically or metaphorically or whatever else. It strikes me as very straightforward.
posted by Nattie at 8:10 AM on August 9