The nefarious "they"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Hasn't "I" been carrying a negative payload for decades ?  ("Never start a sentence with I." "Avoid the first person perpendicular.")

So why not "they" ?  In Buddhist thought, all pronominal distinctions are illusory anyway. All refer to the All.  So it really doesn't matter which pronoun is employed.

Ever. See Derrida on the falsity of incongruity.

JL

Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Grant Barrett
Subject: The nefarious "they"
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Nice self-conscious example of "they" carrying a negative payload in
a discussion of a parking lot used by gays for sexual cruising:

"You would see one guy in a car and then another head would pop up,
or they would gather and have sex in the woods," he said. The lot was
partitioned off in recent years for official vehicles, he said,
adding, "I guess that's when they - I hate to say 'they' but I don't
know what words to use - they migrated to the other lot."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/nyregion/21cruise.html

Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
http://www.doubletongued.org/


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