[Ads-l] Preferred Pronoun--pragmatics and policy

Joel Berson berson at ATT.NET
Wed Oct 12 00:10:16 UTC 2016


There are certain classes of persons -- robocallers, Microsoft engineers who claim that there is something wrong with my computer that they can fix if I give them remote access to it, solicitors who call during dinner hours, ... -- to whom I've long wished to give the title "fatherfucker."  I suspect it will be more offensive to those classes than motherfucker, many of whom have accents that suggest they come from Asian cultures 
and thus perhaps the more conservative, easily-offended religions.
Perhaps not very PC, but I use what little information I can glean to develop the most suitable response.

Joel


      From: David Kendal <me at DPK.IO>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2016 5:19 PM
 Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Preferred Pronoun--pragmatics and policy
   
> On 11 Oct 2016, at 22:26, MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY RDECOM AMRDEC (US) <william.d.mullins18.civ at mail.mil> wrote:
> 
> I prefer "his majesty," but it's already taken:
> 
> http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/29230/

"Motherfucker" is also sadly gone:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comicsandcosplay/comics/critical-miss/11086-We-ve-Seen-The-Future-And-It-s-NSFW

More seriously, I started collecting resources on strange pronouns
a while ago and never really finished. But you can get some sense of
the historical attempts in this direction from what I did achieve:
http://dpk.io/artificialpronouns

dpk (David P. Kendal) · Nassauische Str. 36, 10717 DE · http://dpk.io/
    In politics, obedience and support are the same thing.
                                                  — Hannah Arendt

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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