she as a gender-neutral pronoun

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun Jan 2 15:13:45 UTC 2011 

At 9:07 AM -0500 1/2/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>I've seen this many times in lit-crit prose over the past, say, fifteen
>years, chiefly in the works of female writers, who, it may be assumed, find
>"she" the more "natural" pronoun.
>
>Male writers also use it, and I've seen it alternated with "he," more or
>less at random, though in different sentences. That seems to be quite
>common.
>
>JL

It could also be that when it's alternated we don't notice the
gender-neutral "he" and just register the gender-neutral "she".  As
far as disciplines go, there's been a tendency over the last couple
of decades in much linguistic semantics/pragmatics and philosophy of
language work to use the convention that the arbitrary speaker is
"she" and the arbitrary hearer "he".

LH

>
>
>
>On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 6:31 AM, Michael Newman
><michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu>wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Michael Newman <michael.newman at QC.CUNY.EDU>
>>  Subject:      Re: she as a gender-neutral pronoun
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  I think somewhere I called that use of she "the affirmative action =
>>  pronoun." I think some people didn't think that was very funny.
>>
>>  There are legitimate semantic reasons to prefer a singular pronoun in =
>>  some contexts where the sex of the referent is logically sex-indefiite, =
>>  in particular to create a more personal rhetorical effect. You can =
>>  better imagine a personification of "a solitary reader" "the critic" =
>>  etc. with a singular pronoun than with they However, in these cases, the =
>>  writers are simply trying to not violate a ridiculous prescriptive rule. =
>>  In doing so, they lose the ability to modulate between more generic and =
>>  more individual interpretations.  Hopefully, that norm will go the way =
>>  of the prohibition against sentential hopefully.=20
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  Michael Newman
>>  Associate Professor of Linguistics
>>  Queens College/CUNY
>>  michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>  On Jan 2, 2011, at 4:07 AM, Paul Frank wrote:
>>
>>  > ---------------------- Information from the mail header =
>>  -----------------------
>>  > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  > Poster:       Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
>>  > Subject:      she as a gender-neutral pronoun
>>  > =
>>  --------------------------------------------------------------------------=
>>  -----
>>  >=20
>>  > Several years ago, I started noticing the use in academic prose of
>>  > "she" as a gender-neutral pronoun to avoid the supposedly sexist "he"
>>  > and the =
>>  no-matter-how-much-descriptivists-say-it's-okay-somewhat-problematic
>>  > "they." My unscientific impression is that this use of "she" is
>>  > gradually becoming de rigueur in academic prose, at least in the
>>  > humanities.
>>  >=20
>>  > The New York Review of Books recently asked "six accomplished critics
>>  > to explain what it is they do." Note their use of the pronoun "she":
>>  >=20
>>  > Stephen Burn: A solitary reader, brooding over an obscure contemporary
>>  > novel, or slowly puzzling out a page of =93Finnegans Wake,=94 is =
>>  suddenly
>>  > not so solitary. Amid the network of networks there is always another
>>  > reader, an improvised community into which she can merge and make
>>  > visible her invented self.
>>  >=20
>>  > Katie Roiphe: Now, maybe more than ever, in a cultural desert
>>  > characterized by the vast, glimmering territory of the Internet, it is
>>  > important for the critic to write gracefully. If she is going to
>>  > separate excellent books from those merely posing as excellent, the
>>  > brilliant from the flashy, the real talent from the hyped =97 if she =
>>  is
>>  > going to ferret out what is lazy and merely fashionable, if she is
>>  > going to hold writers to the standards they have set for themselves in
>>  > their best work, if she is going to be the ideal reader and in so
>  > > doing prove that the ideal reader exists =97 then the critic has one
>>  > important function: to write well.
>>  >=20
>>  > Adam Kirsch: Of course, this is an ideal. Most of the time, depending
>>  > on the kind of piece she is writing, the critic also has other
>>  > responsibilities. She is a journalist: a review is, in part, a news
>>  > story about a new book and why it matters. She is a consumer advocate,
>>  > giving the reader enough information to decide whether to buy the
>>  > book. At times =97 as we saw recently in the discussion of Jonathan
>>  > Franzen=92s =93Freedom=94 =97 she is a social commentator, trying to =
>>  determine
>>  > what the success (or failure) of a particular book says about America
>>  > at large, how the nation lives or thinks or imagines.
>>  >=20
>>  > I know, "they" has been used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun
>>  > since the 15th century if not before, but many writers still try to
>>  > avoid this use of "they" and in some circles "she" now appears to be a
>>  > standard gender-neutral pronoun, though even in academic prose it
>>  > obviously still refers to women more often than to men.
>>  >=20
>>  > It would be interesting to know in which disciplines this use of "she"
>>  > is more prevalent. It's not surprising that it's common in lit-crit
>>  > circles.
>>  >=20
>>  > Paul
>>  >=20
>>  > Paul Frank
>>  > Translator
>>  > Chinese, German, French, Italian > English
>>  > Espace de l'Europe 16
>>  > Neuch=E2tel, Switzerland
>>  > mobile +41 79 957 5318
>>  > paulfrank at bfs.admin.ch
>>  > paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
>>  >=20
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>
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