koch@piston.DEC (Kevin Koch LTN1-2/B17 DTN229-6274) (06/17/85)
> ... on the problem of what word to use to refer to a person of > unknown gender. ... I don't think any of those solutions is the way to go. > Instead, I think a new word is in order. ... My nomination? "Zhe." > (The zh is pronounced like the z in azure) > > Example: If a person saw an automobile accident, what should zhe do? The English language has had *precisely* the word you are looking for for hundreds of years now. Its use sounds no more or less stilted than your proposed new word. It is 'one.' "If one saw an automobile accident, what should one do?"
ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (06/18/85)
>> ... on the problem of what word to use to refer to a person of >> unknown gender. ... I don't think any of those solutions is the way to go. >> Instead, I think a new word is in order. ... My nomination? "Zhe." >> (The zh is pronounced like the z in azure) >> >> Example: If a person saw an automobile accident, what should zhe do? > > The English language has had *precisely* the word you are looking >for for hundreds of years now. Its use sounds no more or less stilted >than your proposed new word. It is 'one.' > >"If one saw an automobile accident, what should one do?" > False! You'll notice you rephrased the original sentence by removing the original noun. In so doing, you covered up the flaw with your solution. What's needed is a gender-free ANAPHORIC pronoun, that is, one used to refer to previously mentioned noun phrases, as in the sentences below: Subjective: We need a programmer. {S/he,they,one?} must have 5 years' programming experience in C. Possessive: The applicant must know how to tie {his/her,their,one's?} shoes. Objective: When you see John's secretary, give {him/her,them,one?} this memo. Note that `one' absolutely refuses to work in such sentences. -michael
zben@umd5.UUCP (06/19/85)
In article <2718@decwrl.UUCP> koch@piston.DEC (Kevin Koch LTN1-2/B17 DTN229-6274) writes: >> ... on the problem of what word to use to refer to a person of >> unknown gender. ... I don't think any of those solutions is the way to go. >> Instead, I think a new word is in order. ... My nomination? "Zhe." >> (The zh is pronounced like the z in azure) >> > The English language has had *precisely* the word you are looking >for for hundreds of years now. Its use sounds no more or less stilted >than your proposed new word. It is 'one.' > There are places that "one" doesn't work. If it did, we would just use it and this discussion would not have to take place... A year or two ago I suggested "te" for a general pronoun and "ter" for the posessive. Like the "zhe" suggestion, this is close enough to "he" and "her" for someone new to the usage to pick it up from context. I was immediately flamed from all sides. One of the flamers was the now- famous laura c., and corresponding with her made up for the uncomfort of the flames. Nevertheless, the point was made that there would need to be one whale of a lot of updating of documents and rewriting of books to bring a big change like this off. I guess I understand this, but the question is one of balancing the costs against the advantages. People will differ on this, and people being what they are a lot of the flamage will be due to religious beliefs and not from careful thinking. Don't let it get you down... -- Ben Cranston ...{seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben zben@umd2.ARPA
jeff@rtech.UUCP (Jeff Lichtman) (06/20/85)
> > ... on the problem of what word to use to refer to a person of > > unknown gender. ... I don't think any of those solutions is the way to go. > > Instead, I think a new word is in order. ... My nomination? "Zhe." > > (The zh is pronounced like the z in azure) > > > > Example: If a person saw an automobile accident, what should zhe do? > > The English language has had *precisely* the word you are looking > for for hundreds of years now. Its use sounds no more or less stilted > than your proposed new word. It is 'one.' > > "If one saw an automobile accident, what should one do?" "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to one." Sorry, the problem still exists. The suggested answers usually fall into one of the following categories: Use the plural: "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to them." The argument here is that English is a flexible language that is defined by usage, and this is how many people already talk. Also, getting rid of sexist language is more important than adherance to abstract rules of grammar. Invent a new word: "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to zhe." Similar arguments to above. Stick with "Standard English": "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to him." The argument here is that this is gramatically correct, and has served for many years. Name both genders: "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to him or her." This is an easy transformation that is always possible, is easy, and is correct even to a strict grammarian. Stick with standard English, but re-phrase: "Say hello to whomever you should happen to see." The argument here is that one can always structure a sentence both to avoid sexist language and be gramatically correct. Have I missed any categories? I usually favor the last category, and sometimes fall back on the next-to-last. However, this can sometimes take all the punch out of a sentence. I would love for there to be a set of personal pronouns for both sexes, but the chances of this happening are pretty slim; language has a life of its own, and can't always be amended in favor of the logical. -- Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.) aka Swazoo Koolak {amdahl, sun}!rtech!jeff {ucbvax, decvax}!mtxinu!rtech!jeff
jack@boring.UUCP (06/24/85)
> Subjective: We need a programmer. {S/he,they,one?} must have 5 years' > programming experience in C. We need a programmer. Five year programming experience in C is required. > Possessive: The applicant must know how to tie {his/her,their,one's?} > shoes. Applicants must know how to tie their shoes. > Objective: When you see John's secretary, give {him/her,them,one?} this > memo. No problem here, since this is speaking language. The person saying this probably knows the gender of John's secretary. Otherwise just ask "Could you give this to John's secretary?". What I'm trying to say is the following: We don't have to make up new words to write gender-less language. In the cases where it is really important (like advertisments, etc), you can just re-organise your sentences to circumvene the problem. In manuals and the like, you can use 'one'. In cases that aren't covered by this, you pick one of he/she, and alternate. This tends to work very well. Ursula Le Guin wrote a book ("The Left Hand of Darkness"), in which most of the people were genderless. In the introduction, she said that she refrained from using 'heshe' or 'te', since they sound so unnatural, but used 'he' and 'she' alternately in stead. The first time you meet the use of 'she' for, for instance, the king, it looks very funny, but you get used to it very soon, and tend to forget the gender-specific aspect of he or she (At least, I did). -- Jack Jansen, jack@mcvax.UUCP The shell is my oyster.
ccrrick@ucdavis.UUCP (Rick Heli) (06/27/85)
Jack Jansen, jack@mcvax.UUCP writes > Ursula Le Guin wrote a book ("The Left > Hand of Darkness"), in which most of the people were genderless. > In the introduction, she said that she refrained from using 'heshe' or > 'te', since they sound so unnatural, but used 'he' and 'she' alternately > in stead. The first time you meet the use of 'she' for, for instance, > the king, it looks very funny, but you get used to it very soon, and > tend to forget the gender-specific aspect of he or she (At least, I did). I don't agree. Le Guin should have invented new terms for her book because the way LHOD came out, instead of being genderless, most of the main characters came out seeming very male. She has some success in startling us with minor characters who look like one gender, but have the capability of the other, but most of the main characters, particularly Estraven, seem so male that Le Guin's whole purpose is hurt. If she had invented other terms, maybe it would have been more worked more believably. -- --rick heli (... ucbvax!ucdavis!groucho!ccrrick)
mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) (06/28/85)
jeff@rtech.UUCP (Jeff Lichtman) in Message-ID: <498@rtech.UUCP> writes: > > "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to one." Sorry, the problem > still exists. The suggested answers usually fall into one of the following > categories: > > Use the plural: ^^^^^^ Let's hold off judgement on what this is, and identify it by the actual forms involved: they, them, their, theirs, and either themselves (as you might expect) or themself (as you in fact hear often). The last peculiarity leads to the argument I've offerred here before, that this process is not really using plurals to agree with an indefinite, but rather letting the forms "they" etc be used AS SINGULARS when anaphoric to an indefinite. > > "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to them." > > The argument here is that English is a flexible language > that is defined by usage, and this is how many people > already talk. Also, getting rid of sexist language is > more important than adherance to abstract rules of grammar. Distinguish """rules""" as promulgated by prescriptivists from the rules which would constitute a description of the actual language. Then the two points collapse together: advocates of this usage in fact SUPPORT adherence to the (real) abstract rules of grammar, i.e. the grammar that people use. BTW, this isn't a special characteristic of English. Any language changes under the friction of actual use, even those with a National Academy or other conservative force. > > Invent a new word: > Stick with "Standard English": > > "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to him." > > The argument here is that this is gramatically correct, > and has served for many years. Sort of; in any event that's how proponents of this option would put it. But what that means in this context is mostly "this is what has traditionally been urged". What has to be argued out about this option is whether there's anything wrong with it. After all, a normative grammarian urging this would not be able to stop others from speaking however they want, e.g. using "they" -- as S. Pemberton's citations from the OED pointed up, that alternative has survived for 600 years. What has happened is that the shoe is on the other foot. This Standard usage has come under attack from feminists as inherently reflecting assumptions about sex roles (including people like me who take a descriptivist stand and write words like "normative" and "prescriptive" with an ugly leer, yet feel no contradiction in becoming rather prescriptive ourselves as part of a social program. There's no real contradiction, and I'll happily defend that combination of stances some other time, if anyone bothers to flame me as a hypocrite). So the controversy doesn't center around that seemingly straightforward argument for the "he/him" normative standard. Rather, the issue has become the defense of it as not really reflecting assumptions about sex roles, and counterattacks to those defenses. The most frequently offerred defense, and a pretty cogent one, is that its origins are in the arbitrary and fairly innocent system of grammatical gender, which has largely died out in English leaving just this relict. But that defense won't quite do, for two reasons: (1) The history is not actually all that innocent. We term this grammatical subsystem 'gender', and call two of the genders 'masculine' and 'feminine', because in fact they largely agree with natural gender for animals and especially humans. The fact that masc is generally the unmarked gender (in the European languages for which this terminology was developed) may reflect an attitude within the speech community that it was in some way normal or 'default' to be male or to talk about males, and somewhat peculiar or out-of-the-ordinary to be female or to talk about females. (2) And in any event, Modern English hardly has any arbitrary grammatical gender -- it's always in accord with natural gender with a couple moribund exceptions. Thus "he" always carries with it the meaning 'male' today, even if at one time it did not. > > Name both genders: > > "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to him or her." > > This is an easy transformation that is always possible, > is easy, and is correct even to a strict grammarian. > Yes indeed. Sometimes it's rather clumsy, though, and becomes tedious not just to over-sensitive stylists but to anybody. There's nothing clumsy about it in Jeff's example, but you can easily construct examples where you have to use the formula two or three times in a sentence and five or six times in a paragraph, and that becomes very ugly very quickly. We've been looking at the same kind of example throughout. If you vary it a bit, you can easily find cases where this (or a coinage, or eliminating the need for a pronoun) are the only viable options: i.e., where neither "one" nor "you" nor "they" works. > Stick with standard English, but re-phrase: > > "Say hello to whomever you should happen to see." > ... Compare _A_Manual_of_Style_ (University of Chicago Press) 12th ed with _The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style_ (adopted as new official name) 13th ed, for an example of a massive job of this sort of rewriting. > > Have I missed any categories? Yes: 6) Use "she" (and related forms in other cases) consistently. Despite my abstract convictions, I admit this was quite startling the first time I saw it. But more people are trying it out, and you really do get used to it. For an example of a work that carries this policy through, see Cooper and Clancy _Oh!_Pascal!_. This does not exclude using "you" or "one" (or "we" or "they") where they will work, but rather just selects "she" over "he" or "she or he" where nothing but one of those would work. 7) Use "she" and "he" alternately or randomly from one work to another, or from one passage to another. As with option (6), this does not exclude the other alternatives when they will work. So far as I know, this suggestion was first publicly aired by J. D. McCawley in a review of Robin Lakoff's _Language_and_Woman's_Place_ (1975). I had never seen it actually carried out in anything like strict alternation until last week. The book that I stumbled upon which appears to do this (the author doesn't make a big point of it in a note or anything) is _The_Nature_of_Mathematical_Knowledge_ by Philip Kitcher (Oxford U.P. 1984). He switches back and forth like clockwork, with only one exception that I've noticed so far. I mean each passage or example, not each instance of a pronoun. (He also uses most of the other options discussed above, as well as the philosophers' oddity of sometimes writing "I" to mean something like 'any rational being'.) Any Minnesotans out there? Ask him if the strict alternation was as intentional as it looks (and how the early exception happened). -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar
michael@spar.UUCP (Not Bill Joy) (06/28/85)
> = [Jack Jansen] >> Subjective: We need a programmer. {S/he,they,one?} must have 5 years' >> programming experience in C. > We need a programmer. Five year programming experience > in C is required. >> Possessive: The applicant must know how to tie {his/her,their,one's?} >> shoes. > Applicants must know how to tie their shoes. >> Objective:When you see John's secretary, give {him/her,them,one?} this >> memo. > No problem here, since this is speaking language. The > person saying this probably knows the gender of John's > secretary... > [How can YOU say I probably know the correct gender? It's MY example! -me] > > ...Otherwise just ask "Could you give this > to John's secretary?". > [Bogus.. that's not saying the same thing at all! -me] > >What I'm trying to say is the following: We don't have to make up new words >to write gender-less language. In the cases where it is really important >(like advertisments, etc), you can just re-organise your sentences to >circumvene the problem. In manuals and the like, you can use 'one'. In >cases that aren't covered by this, you pick one of he/she, and alternate. I agree that in carefully worded prose, the techniques you have suggested are effective, especially when the intended audience expects or requires a conservative formal style. But there are many other contexts where rewording requires more effort than I care to put out. Like when writing DrivelNet articles, for instance. Your suggestion is particularly worthless in daily speech, where you have no power to edit the sentence you are responding to, and where the necessary mental effort is prohibitive... Somebody else: We have hired a new programmer. Me: What day do they start? And do they know C? Incorrect? Yes. But it is handy, understandable, and natural, especially to those who have not allowed themselves to be brainwashed by so many grammar texts. No doubt, you can show me some way to reword `my' response. And that would miss the point. English already has a sex-ambiguous third person anaphoric pronoun. It has been in colloquial use for a long time -- in spite of the condemnation of grammarians. Certain recent changes in society appear to favor abandoning what was at one time a harmless artificial rule. -michael
msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (06/29/85)
jack@boring.UUCP (Jack Jansen) writes: > In manuals and the like, you can use 'one'. No, in manuals and the like, you should use "you"! (The preceding two sentences ARE like manuals and, see, even Jack used "you"!) Mark Brader
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (07/01/85)
>7) Use "she" and "he" alternately or randomly from one work to > another, or from one passage to another. > > So far as I know, this suggestion was first publicly aired by J. D. >McCawley in a review of Robin Lakoff's _Language_and_Woman's_Place_ (1975). >I had never seen it actually carried out in anything like strict alternation >until last week. The book that I stumbled upon which appears to do this >(the author doesn't make a big point of it in a note or anything) is >_The_Nature_of_Mathematical_Knowledge_ by Philip Kitcher (Oxford U.P. >1984). He switches back and forth like clockwork, with only one exception >that I've noticed so far. I mean each passage or example, not each instance >of a pronoun.... This was the solution my wife and I adopted in our "Psychology of Reading" (Academic Press, 1983), over the objections of the copy-editor, who wanted "he or she". We prevailed, because we felt strongly that "he or she" was very clumsy in practice. When the referent remained the same (real or abstract) person throughout a passage, the pronoun remained consistent. When the referent changed, so might the pronoun. Only where the sex of the referent was absolutely or probabilistically determined would the pronoun be fixed in advance (We did not refer to a dyslexic child as "she" unless we wanted to point out an exception to the general rule that most dyslexic children are male). It is very easy to get used to the generic "she", but I think it is better to balance "she" and "he" through a text. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt
mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) (07/02/85)
From: michael@spar.UUCP (Not Bill Joy)
Message-ID: <371@spar.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Jun-85 04:11:51 CDT
> Somebody else: We have hired a new programmer.
> Me: What day do they start? And do they know C?
>
> Incorrect? Yes. But it is handy, understandable, and natural, especially
> to those who have not allowed themselves to be brainwashed by so many
> grammar texts.
^^^^^^^ ^^^^^
...
> No doubt, you can show me some way to reword `my' response. And that
> would miss the point. English already has a sex-ambiguous third person
> anaphoric pronoun. It has been in colloquial use for a long time -- in
> spite of the condemnation of grammarians.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
> -michael
michael --
{I'm quite in agreement with you about 'they', and have posted to
that effect}
But, wait a minute! Hold my horses! There are plenty of us who consider
ourselves grammarians, and use grammar texts, without being prescriptive /
normative grammarians in most ways. Don't tar with such a wide brush.
Not that I take the absolutist attitude about this that was common in
linguistics not too long ago. It's reasonable to take an interest in the
direction the language develops, and to like some changes and dislike others.
What's added to that from the descriptive perspective (which apparently
you share) is just that it's not a moral issue, and language change is
not a matter of `degeneration'.
--
-- Mitch Marks @ UChicago
...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmarmatt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt ) (07/03/85)
>> Stick with "Standard English": >> >> "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to him." >> >> The argument here is that this is gramatically correct, >> and has served for many years. >Sort of; in any event that's how proponents of this option would put >it. But what that means in this context is mostly "this is what has >traditionally been urged". > What has to be argued out about this option is whether there's >anything wrong with it. After all, a normative grammarian urging this >would not be able to stop others from speaking however they want, e.g. >using "they" -- as S. Pemberton's citations from the OED pointed up, >that alternative has survived for 600 years. What has happened is >that the shoe is on the other foot. This Standard usage has come >under attack from feminists as inherently reflecting assumptions about >sex roles (including people like me who take a descriptivist stand and >write words like "normative" and "prescriptive" with an ugly leer, yet >feel no contradiction in becoming rather prescriptive ourselves as >part of a social program. There's no real contradiction, and I'll >happily defend that combination of stances some other time, if anyone >bothers to flame me as a hypocrite). I won't flame you as a hypocrite, but I would like to read your defense of the combination of prescriptivism-as-part-of-a-social-program and descriptivism. Also, why do you think this particular prescriptivist change will succeed when so many other prescriptions have been ignored by speakers of natural language for so many years? Also, to what extent should the prescription against the "generic" he/him/his be enforced? Very often, I read a disclaimer at the beginning of a book to the effect that "the masculine pronoun includes the feminine unless there is an explicit statement to the contrary." Is this enough, or should publishers adhere strictly to the Guidelines for Equal Treatment of the Sexes in [fill in the publisher's name] Publications" that most of them adopted in the 1970's? Should a George Gilder have to go to New Orleans to get his book published? And what about speech? Should one react to a speaker's use of he/him/his in the same way as to the use of a vulgar pejorative for a nationality, religion or ethnic group? -- Matt Rosenblatt (matt@amsaa.ARPA)
crs@lanl.ARPA (07/03/85)
> >> Stick with "Standard English": > >> > >> "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to him." > >> > >> The argument here is that this is gramatically correct, > >> and has served for many years. > Isn't this, as many of the examples used in this "debate", a bit artificial? As with many phrases/sentences that people seem to object to as sexist, there is a simpler way. What on earth is the matter with: "If you should happen to see someone, say hello." I have seen few, if any, examples here that couldn't easily be converted to nonsexist form (assuming, for the sake of argument, that they *are* sexist) by just a *little* thought and common sense. Granted that we all could stand to become more sensitive to the way that what we say/write may be taken but habits are strong and the habits of speech and writing have been forming over a lifetime. Do you wonder that there is resistance to change? The great pronoun debate seems, to me, to be producing a lot of dark heat, if I may paraphrase a description of the arguments in net.abortion. I'm not strongly opposed to looking for a gender-neutral pronoun but I'm not sure that I'm strongly in favor of it either. It seems to me, as has often been suggested that a great deal of effort is being spent treating the symptoms while we die of the disease (pronounitis? :-). The examples chosen by both sides of the great debate are usually awkward constructs chosen, it seems, exclusively to promote which ever side of the argument the writer favors. In the mean time may I suggest a tactic that may help to make others as sensitive to sexist speech/writing as we enlightened netters are. (:-) Suppose that whenever we hear someone say something that is ambiguous in a sexist way (as in the example that prompted this article) we say "Do you mean a man, a woman or either?" It is less convenient with written work but letters to the editor or author or publisher are certainly possible. If people are called to account for their ambiguous usage often enough they are apt to become more sensitive and begin trying to get it right the first time. Of *course*, it is a lot of work but do you really think it is any more work than trying to overcome the resistance to changing lifelong language habits? What we really want to change, anyway, is the attitudes. As may be expected, all opinions are mine alone. -- Charlie Sorsby ...!{cmcl2,ihnp4,...}!lanl!crs crs@lanl.arpa
wfmans@ihuxb.UUCP (w. mansfield) (07/03/85)
I hesitate to bring this up, but I seem to remember from my history class that the word man (used as in "all men are created equal") at one time not only did not include women, but also did not include non-whites. I thought that in colonial america slaves and women were considered chattels of their (male) owners, not equal at all. I realize that most folk no longer subscribe to this view, but it could be behind the (my opinion) unreasonable animosity toward male-sounding nouns. I don't care much, as long as no one asks me to change my name.
ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould) (07/09/85)
>>7) Use "she" and "he" alternately or randomly from one work to >> another, or from one passage to another. Even this doesn't always work, however. An introductory programming text written at Berkeley a few years ago used the pronouns interchangably, and randomly assigned them with a program. Somehow, whenever a bad example was given - deliberately to illustrate a point - the pronoun came out "she", or so it seemed. -- Ed Gould mt Xinu, 2910 Seventh St., Berkeley, CA 94710 USA {ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed +1 415 644 0146 "A man of quality is not threatened by a woman of equality."
hollombe@ttidcc.UUCP (The Polymath) (07/11/85)
In article <431@mtxinu.UUCP> ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould) writes: >>>7) Use "she" and "he" alternately or randomly from one work to >>> another, or from one passage to another. > >Even this doesn't always work, however. An introductory programming >text written at Berkeley a few years ago used the pronouns interchangably, >and randomly assigned them with a program. Somehow, whenever a bad >example was given - deliberately to illustrate a point - the pronoun >came out "she", or so it seemed. I once had to use a textbook where the genders were simply alternated, sometimes within the same sentence. The effect was _very_ distracting. Having to deal with a subject that changes sex three times in one sentence slows the reading and information absorption process enormously (at least it did for me), probably because it's so unexpected and unusual. --- -_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe) Citicorp TTI Common Sense is what tells you that a ten 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. pound weight falls ten times as fast as a Santa Monica, CA 90405 one pound weight. (213) 450-9111, ext. 2483 {philabs,randvax,trwrb,vortex}!ttidca!ttidcc!hollombe
mpb@iclbra.UUCP (Paul Blackburn) (07/15/85)
> In article <431@mtxinu.UUCP> ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould) writes: > >>>7) Use "she" and "he" alternately or randomly from one work to > >>> another, or from one passage to another. > > > >Even this doesn't always work, however. An introductory programming > >text written at Berkeley a few years ago used the pronouns interchangably, > >and randomly assigned them with a program. Somehow, whenever a bad > >example was given - deliberately to illustrate a point - the pronoun > >came out "she", or so it seemed. I use the construct "(s)he" but how does one write his/her? "h(is|er)"? -- :~ MAIL: Paul Blackburn, ICL, Lovelace Rd, Bracknell, Berkshire,UK _+_ UUCP: ... ! seismo ! mcvax ! ukc ! stc ! iclbra ! mpb )__) POSN: 51 24' 12" N 0 46' 36" W _+__+__+_ )_)___)__) "What I don't know, I have never shared..." __|__|__|_____ ('Starship trooper', 'The YES album', 1972) L__________/