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From: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: person - (nf)
Message-ID: <387@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Oct-83 22:08:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.387
Posted: Sun Oct  9 22:08:51 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Oct-83 06:02:43 EDT
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#R:tekmdp:-228200:ucbesvax:6900007:000:1272
ucbesvax!turner    Oct  9 14:46:00 1983

Re: "persons" vs. "people"

Why does this kind of thing happen?  I think it's because, somehow,
people equate "legitimate" with "technical"--if a given word has any
possible sentiment behind it, it must be scrubbed.  An example from
a language workbook used in remedial reading:

    "To effectively utilize this product, it is suggested that..."

What they meant, of course, was "For best results, we suggest that you
use this book in the following ways...".  But "best"?  That's subjective.
"we"?  NO NO!  "we" don't exist!  "you"?!  NO!! "YOU" don't exist either!
(The passive construction here is a dodge, one that allows the authors
to scrape by without referring directly either to themselves or their
audience.)

I see a lot of this kind of writing in textbooks on remedial learning and
speech pathology (a friend of mine is doing graduate study on these.) It is
the language of psychology, at least as it was transformed under the
influence of B.F. Skinner into something scoured of personality.

Of course, there is nothing "scientific" about it, per se.  "People" has
more depth (and ambiguity) than "persons"--it is precisely the *sterility*
of the latter term that attracts people who wish to sound more legitimate.
---
Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)