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I've had this conversation several times in my life, where I use a second-person pronoun when actually using the third-person:

"If you were dressed up as a clown at night holding black balloons, I would be suspicious too!"
"I would never dress like a clown."

Or exempting the 'if' from the sentence:

"You choose to join the organization, then you're responsible for that organization's beliefs and policies."

"I am not a member of that organization"

It's actually hard to come up with examples for this off the top of my head. The point is that I use 'you' as a third person pronoun because it's hypothetical, but it's taken literally, and I want to be able to tell the person I'm talking to what the name of the grammatical construct is so that he or she doesn't misunderstand me.

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NobleUplift
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    It's not third person. It refers to an indefinite person, but it takes second person agreement, not third person. – John Lawler Aug 09 '16 at 17:44
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    Possible duplicate of What is it called when using 'you' in place of anyone or yourself in example? – Edwin Ashworth Aug 09 '16 at 22:25
  • Gotta love that overly excessive bureaucracy inherent to Stack Exchange putting an answered question on hold. – NobleUplift Aug 12 '16 at 20:39
  • @JohnLawler it takes a second person pronoun but is not referring to the second person (the actual you) in this case. If the pronoun isn't referring to I, then it is being used as a third person. – NobleUplift Aug 12 '16 at 20:43
  • No, person is a grammatical concept, and depends on inflection. If it takes second-person inflection, it's second-person. What it refers to is irrelevant. German Sie is in fact third person plural, though it's used for polite 'you'; similarly, Usted in Spanish is also third person, despite the same meaning. Rather like Your Majesty and His Majesty both being third person. Third person is more polite than second, so it's often used for polite (i.e, catering to nobles) 2nd person. – John Lawler Aug 12 '16 at 23:08
  • 'Gotta love that overly excessive bureaucracy inherent to Stack Exchange putting an answered question on hold. ' Is ELU supposed to keep answering the same questions again and again? 'Overly excessive [sic] bookkeeping' here is actually trying to keep the site tidy and searchable. – Edwin Ashworth May 20 '18 at 15:24
  • Then it should be marked as a duplicate of a question with an accepted answer, not put on hold @EdwinAshworth. There is no justification for putting a question on hold (or closed as it is now) when it has two very good answers and one of them is accepted. 15 people agree with me. – NobleUplift May 21 '18 at 16:52
  • I did a search for "generic you" and out of all the results, searching by Relevance, the answer to my question shows up in the #2 spot. With 15 votes it far outstrips all of the other questions, because my question was worded the best. – NobleUplift May 21 '18 at 17:17
  • I agree that the reason given is incorrect. I voted using the duplicate CV reason, you'll notice. But the question has certainly been answered before, so this should be closed. And some people seem to disagree with your opinion of your better wording. The duplicate didn't attract any 'unclear what you're asking' close-votes. – Edwin Ashworth May 21 '18 at 19:38

2 Answers2

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I believe it's called "generic you." From Wikipedia:

In English grammar and in particular in casual English, generic you, impersonal you or indefinite you is the pronoun you in its use in referring to an unspecified person, as opposed to its use as the second person pronoun.

The generic you is primarily used as a colloquial or less formal substitute for one.1[2] For instance,

"Brushing one's teeth is healthy."

can be expressed less formally as

"Brushing your teeth is healthy."
Kit Z. Fox
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bill
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This is called an impersonal pronoun, and it is equivalent to using one. It is just a convention we have in English that we can use the second person pronoun in this context.

Other languages have other conventions for referring to a person as a generic object, and may not use the second person at all.

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