dyer@vaxuum.DEC (No Strings Attached) (02/01/85)
Re: Gender-Specific Pronouns___________________________________________________ > The use of 'they' with a singular referent does not improve the clarity of > the sentence it is in, in fact it degrades the clarity. The use of 'he' with a singular referent does not improve the clarity of the sentence it is in. In fact it degrades the clarity. > A: Ms. Johnson's secretary says that they will come by tomorrow. > B: Are both Ms. Johnson and her secretary coming? > A: No, only one person is coming. I just said 'they' because I don't know > the gender of Ms. Johnson's secretary. There's no doubt at all that the first sentence is ambiguous. But B's suggestion: > B: Then why didn't you say 'he' as standard English convention requires. also yields confusion: "Ms. Johnson's secretary says that he will come by tomorrow." No matter what "standard English convention" "requires" or doesn't "require", people are going to conclude from this that Ms. Johnson's secre- tary is male. > A: To say 'he' would have been sexist, it would have implied that the > secretary was male. > > B: Nonsense! . . . B says it's nonsense, so I guess that makes it nonsense? Nonsense! > [B:] . . . To say 'she' would have been sexist since it would assume outright > that the secretary was female. By convention 'he' means either a male or a > person of undetermined sex depending upon context. . . . Gee, thanks for the grammar lesson. It's not a convention, though; more people use 'they' than 'he' for these things, regardless of what their English teachers tell them. > [B:] . . . In this case the context clearly implied the sex was undeter- > mined. . . . Why? Because secretaries are "supposed" to be female? Perhaps we're supposed to say "Ms. Johnson's male secretary says that he will come by tomor- row" if we know he's male? I really don't see how you can infer undetermined sex from the sent- ence. > [B:] . . . men should really have their own pronouns . . . That's a new twist. Men *do* have their own pronouns: "he", "his", etc. Humans in general do not, but the grammar books tell us to use the men's pronouns. You make it sound like the men are being generous, sharing their prounouns with the rest of humanity. What really happened is quite different. Way back when, only men were permitted to learn how to read and write. These men made the English rules. Eventually, these men implemented the "male- as-norm" pronoun rules. > [B:] . . . but it works the way it is. . . . No it doesn't. Every study done on the subject has proven that people think male when they come across these pronouns. > [B:] . . . To use 'they' is really confusing since it ALWAYS refers to more > than one person. Only according to the grammar books. Like I said before, out here in the real world, more people use 'they' than 'he'. In fact, 'they' was the word people used before those English grammarians came up with using 'he'! Just look at some old Shakespeare or something: vvvvv "God send everyone their heart's desire." ^^^^^ I agree that using 'they' can lead to ambiguity; but you must agree that using 'he' also leads to ambiguity! The question is, which ambiguity does the least damage? I choose 'they' because it doesn't promote the idea that men are the representatives of the species. <_Jym_> P.S.: If you want to eliminate the ambiguity altogether, come up with a new word! :::::::::::::::: Jym Dyer ::::' :: `:::: Dracut, Massachusetts ::' :: `:: :: :: :: DYER%VAXUUM.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA :: .::::. :: {allegra|decvax|ihnp4|ucbvax}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-vaxuum!dyer ::..:' :: `:..:: ::::. :: .:::: Statements made in this article are my own; they might not :::::::::::::::: reflect the views of |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| Equipment Corporation.