This study compares two forms meaning 'man', Icelandic maður and Swedish man, for the construction of a detached, general discourse stance. Used in a generic way, Icelandic maður is linked to several semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic constraints, whereas Swedish man can be more freely applied across genres and contexts. General socio-cognitive development and culturally specific stylistic constraints appear to be the two main factors underlying the distributions of maður/man.