The nefarious "they"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Evidently. But "they" is also "they."  So was it the speaker's bad conscience talking, or was it  his uneasiness that he would be accused of having one ?  Or both ?

JL

"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Re: The nefarious "they"
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On Sep 21, 2005, at 6:28 AM, Grant Barrett wrote:

> 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."

i guess this is the "they" that's short for "those people".

arnold

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