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From: mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.nlang
Subject: Gender-neutral indefinites: who's arguing what?
Message-ID: <706@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Jun-85 05:50:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.706
Posted: Thu Jun 20 05:50:18 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Jun-85 00:49:07 EDT
Organization: U. Chicago - Computation Center
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Xref: watmath net.women:5961 net.nlang:3213


[][][]

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!mmar