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From: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold%CGL)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: "he or she" - a grammatical problem solved
Message-ID: <788@ucsfcgl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Mar-86 19:50:14 EST
Article-I.D.: ucsfcgl.788
Posted: Mon Mar 10 19:50:14 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Mar-86 03:37:42 EST
References: <2859@amdahl.UUCP> <830@cylixd.UUCP> <978@h-sc1.UUCP>
Reply-To: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold)
Organization: UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
Lines: 58

In article <978@h-sc1.UUCP> breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel) writes:
>Why is 'he' for a person of unknown gender likely to offend the reader?
>Why don't you just consider 'he' the singular pronoun of unknown gender?

Because it isn't.  [Proof included below]  Oh, I know that's what you
were told, but that will teach you to pay attention to proscriptive
grammarians.  What they usually tell you is something like

	If the gender of an individual referred to is unknown or
	unknowable (i.e., no specific person is referred to), use "he"
	or the appropriate equivalent.

This would describe a non-gender related word.  However, try out the
following sentences:

	When a nurse receives a call, he should ...
	When a secretary answers a phone, he should ...

Do you know anyone who would say that, even in formal situations?  I
have yet to run into one.  Everyone I know finds these sentences sound
incorrect, and would use "she" instead.  The only reason imaginable is
that the word "he" is *not* generic.  If it was, the above fragments
would sound quite reasonable.  So why don't they?

Well, the reason is that the word "nurse" comes with a lot of
implications and associated concepts, as do all words.  One of those
concepts is that nurses are usually women.  Now, the sentence isn't
going to sound wrong unless something in there contradicts a normal
assumption.  This contradiction occurs when the word "he" pops in.
But, if the word "he" was generic (and the context of the sentence
makes clear that the speaker is talking generically), it would not come
with any inference which *contradicted* the presumed womanhood of
"nurse" -- it would come with inference which implied, at most,
personhood.  So, in order to get the problem, the word "he" must, *even
in a generic context*, come with an inference which contradicts the
presumed womanhood of "nurse", i.e., it *must* come with a inference of
male-ness.

In fact, there is no such thing as a generic singular pronoun for
referring to humans in English.  "He" certainly doesn't make it,
neither does "she", and you've run out.  Any descriptive grammarian
worth his or her salt would say something more like

	If a generic descriptor is needed, the feminine form is used if
	it fits with the situation described or implied better than a
	masculine form, otherwise the masculine form is used.

That is much closer to how things are done in English today (at least
American English; my pool of British subjects contains only one
person).

		Ken Arnold

P.S.  Nothing in the letter is intended to imply that I think there are
no male nurses or secretaries, or that I think there should not be.  I
know that there are, and I think that there aren't enough.  I use them
as example because of their common inference that holders of these
positions are, for the most part, women.