Irene drove herself to the airport...

...where she put herself on a flight to Paris...

...because she hopes to find herself while backpacking around Europe.

While Irene may have some serious soul-searching to do, at least she's already discovered how

to use reflexive pronouns correctly. Reflexive pronouns include the words "myself",

"yourself", "himself", "herself", "itself", "ourselves", and "themselves".

This particular brand of pronoun is never used as the subject of a sentence...

...but only as a sentence's object. Why?

Because, just as the name "reflexive pronoun" suggests, the pronoun reflects back on a sentence's

subject. For example, if we got a postcard from Irene

that said, "Myself climbed the Matterhorn today"...

...we'd laugh hysterically because that sentence is... really wrong. The reflexive pronoun

"myself" doesn't work as the subject of the sentence.

However, if Irene's postcard instead said, "I treated myself to a gondola ride in Venice

today"...

...or, "I took myself to see the battlefield at Waterloo"...

...we wouldn't laugh at Irene, not only because she's correctly using reflexive pronouns as

objects...

...but also because we'd be jealous of her European wanderings.

Let's look at some more examples involving reflexive pronouns.

Say we have the sentence, "Irene sat herself down to a delicious meal of paella <<pie-AY-uh>>

in Spain."

The object "herself" reflects back on the subject of the sentence, Irene.

Or say we have the sentence, "The cute guy at the club in Rome told himself Irene wouldn't

mind if he danced a little too close to her."

Here, the object "himself" reflects back on the subject of the sentence, our nameless

male club-goer...

...who might want to rethink how he approaches girls who don't know him.

We can also use reflexive pronouns to add emphasis to a sentence.

For example, Irene could send us another postcard that said, "I myself ran with the bulls in

Pamplona"...

...or perhaps, "I went to the topless beach at Biarritz <<BEE-uh-ritz>> myself."

Take away the reflexive pronouns in these two sentences, and we lose the drama of Irene

running through some very narrow streets with some very angry bulls...

...and the drama of Irene wandering around with lots of topless European women on a sunny

summer afternoon.

Nope, that wasn't an awkward experience at all, was it, Irene?

We use reflexive pronouns as objects in a sentence when we want to reflect back on the

sentence's subject...

...or when we want to add emphasis to a sentence.

And now, it's time for Irene to get herself back to the States.

Europe's been a blast, but she's really missing chicken nuggets, Snickers bars...and her mother.