On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 10:14:12AM -0500, Daniel Burrows wrote: > On Monday 31 January 2005 10:06 am, Daniel Burrows wrote: > > "they" is commonly used colloquially > > (at least around here) as a gender-neutral substitute for "he" or "she". > > And just to be ultra-clear, I don't mean "used by PC people", but rather > "used in informal speech as the preferred alternative when you don't know the > gender of the person to whom you are referring" -- much to the dismay of our > high school English teachers, who tried their best to get us to use one of > the formally correct alternatives.
My high school English teachers (and the spouse who is an English major)
all came to the same conclusion:
*) It would be *best* if English adopted an explicit third-person
gender-neutral pronoun (as opposed to a ungendered one, which is what 'it'
means, and which people find quite offensive because it implies no gender,
rather than an unknown one). By the same token, it should also have a
second person plural, which it lacks... neither of these appear to have
any formal choices that are in fact recognized by anyone who *uses* the
language.
*) English common usage (rather than formal usage) is rapidly and widely
adopting "singular they" (much like a lot of the country uses "y'all",
or "you all" for those who don't want to sound Southern, for a second
person plural). This may be offensive to purists, but frankly, purists
shouldn't be speaking English in the first place. It's a terrible language
for purity. :)
The second point above means, very simply, that it is an evolving language,
and the people using the language have found a way to answer their need for
having a way to refer to a third party of an unknown or unspecified gender.
And this isn't just PC-speak; it can be found far more widely than it used
to be, and much more casually.
Certainly, the rules for writing business memos at my employer strongly
imply (though they don't come out and say it) that using "he" is considered
to be reinforcing a discrimination of language in connotation, *whatever*
the denotation may be, and is to be avoided - whether by using a specific
noun ("the customer", "the employee"), singular they (if you can't read
the sentance out loud with a straight face, this is a bad choice), or
restructuring the sentance to not need a pronoun in that spot.
The first of those tends to get clumsy quickly; the latter is one of the
only real, workable solutions that doens't piss off one camp or the other,
because it avoids the situation entirely.
--
Joel Aelwyn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ,''`.
: :' :
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