mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) (06/20/85)
[][][]
I hope it's obvious to all that there are two different debates going
on about gender-neutral[ized] indefinite pronouns:
Debate # 1 WHETHER to adopt & encourage changed usage
Debate # 2 HOW to adopt & encourage changed usage
(These are continuing discussions in American culture generally, I don't
mean just on our network.) Most of the discussion recently on the net has
been within Debate #2 -- although J Eric Resco has been getting hotheaded
within Debate #1, and something from Colin Rafferty which I haven't seen
in its entirety (only quoted in part by D. Steiny) may also belong there.
Bryan Coughlan, in defense of his suggestion to coin a new pronoun, says:
> The third person singular is the only form without
> a gender neutral pronoun. Why should this be so?
> Well, when the class was set up, women were considered
> by everyone to be second-class citizens. Thus, when in
> doubt, the default gender was male. Since then, things
> have changed to the point where women are actually
> considered to be first-class citizens (I hope!). I
> think that this is a big enough change in society
> to open up the pronoun class to include a new one.
This is a good summary of the general argument to be made on the 'pro'
side of Debate #1; it establishes the direction to take in answering
those who repeat the claim that the traditional 'indefinite he' is free
of specifically male implications. What worries me is that this was
Bryan's response to one of my comments (in which I objected to his proposal
to coin a new pronoun). Does that mean that I have seemed to be arguing
the 'anti' side in Debate #1 ?? Gosh! No, I'm presupposing an interest
in the same end, and just arguing about means.
So (strictly within Debate #2), I would emend that argument by replacing
"new one" ( = "new pronoun") at the end, with "new standard usage". I've
argued in previous postings that a newly-coined word, though a nice
theoretical solution, has in practise no real hope of success. Sorry about
that counsel of despair, but at least I had a countersuggestion. Take
the indefinite 'they' which is so widespread in informal speech, and usher
it into the canon of standard usage for academic and professional writing.
(S. Pemberton has provided evidence that it has long been normal in
literary use.) It won't serve every purpose -- 'one' and 'you' are
still very necessary and useful -- but it does stand a good chance
of ACTUALLY catching on as the replacement for indefinite 'he'
in written standard English.
And what does it take to encourage that? Patient rebuttal of those who
insist that it is just ungrammatical. See for instance D. Steiny's
reply ( <170@idsvax.UUCP> ) to C. Rafferty <374@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA>
(though it's not clear from the quotations whether Colin was objecting
to this use of 'they' in particular, or to a general "laxness" of
dictionaries not being sufficiently prescriptive for his taste).
-- Mitch Marks
@ UChicago (linguistics)
ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmarcs1@oddjob.UUCP (Cheryl Stewart) (06/20/85)
In article <706@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) writes: > >[][][] > >I hope it's obvious to all that there are two different debates going >on about gender-neutral[ized] indefinite pronouns: > > Debate # 1 WHETHER to adopt & encourage changed usage > > Debate # 2 HOW to adopt & encourage changed usage > Gender-neutral pronouns are one thing--but there is yet a third debate: Debate # 3 How & whether to adopt and encourage changed usag as regards to gender specific NOUNS. Clearly, the way we reference a person directly in a sentence (man, woman, person, joker, master, mistress, etc. etc.) has much, much more cultural implications than the way we reference a person indefinitely with a pronoun. WHAT IS AN APPROPRIATE GENDER-NEUTRAL NOUN? PERSON!!! RIGHT???!!! RIGHT. The suggestion to use the word "man" as a gender-neutral noun (cf. Now is the time ...) has quite a few merits, in that there would be fewer opportunities for men to rub women's faces in phrases like "this is a man's job" and "we're looking for a repairMAN". If people just started using the word "man" UNIFORMLY as a gender-neutral noun, as it is already in many contexts, we could lexically outwit and confuse the enemy. If a woman refuses to be CALLED a "woman" in the same way a black refuses to be called "[that offensive n-word, that I won't repeat]" men would be hard-put to find the phraseology to refer to [work typically done by females?] in order to discuss the differences between work typically done by males and work typically done by females. The idea is not encourage the most tactfully correct change in usage, but rather the most tactically effective change in usage...to use their own words agianst them. You see, as it stands now, sexists have an advantage. They can use all of the cultural connotations of the word "man" to "inadvertently" or "jokingly" or "seriously in private" reinforce traditional roles in society. My suggestion that the word "man" be used uniformly as a gender- NEUTRAL noun is intended to take away from sexists the power to use this word like a weapon against women. It is not intended to glorify masculine character attributes or anathematize feminine character attributes. It is intended to allow any man, male or female, to be as feminine or masculine as he so desires. But it's also just a suggestion...I do not expect that the idea will catch on, or even be discussed widely. I'm just tired of having my face rubbed in half-baked notions about "women's work" and "men's work". If I had MY way, NOBODY would have to work ever at all! Cheryl Stewart P.S. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet... so why not call it a jackhammer? A jackhammer is a jackhammer is a jackhammer. -- There's one kind of favor I'll ask of you: Just see that my grave is kept clean.