Gender neutrality and language

[Ann Evans]

Thanks to everyone for enlightening responses.  I have introduced my
students to the plural solution, and that is not always graceful, but it is
a beginning.  "One" would also be useful in many cases, but I think the
Queen's use of "one" for "I" has made it sound snooty.

...and I also would like to take back my use of the word "degenerated," as
what I meant was that the discussion had slipped off subject.  My personal
reaction was something like humor to hear God injected into a discussion of
grammar, when God's children all over the world have created such differing
and fascinating grammar rules, most of which would clearly contradict the
rules of other cultures, also inhabited by His, Her, or Its children.

On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 9:17 AM, Ronald Kephart <rkephart at unf.edu> wrote:

>  On 3/3/08 9:12 PM, "Ann Evans" <annevans123 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> It's interesting that this post has degenerated into a religious
> discussion
> > ....
> >
> And I apologize for that, since it was my fault. I am especially sensitive
>
> to this issue this semester because I am teaching a cultural anthropology
> course that seems to have an unusually high number of creationists,
> intelligent designists, and theistic evolutionists. So when a poster here
> seemed to suggest that the male first, female second order of things was
> put
> there by a god, my anti-nonsense reflex went into overdrive. Sorry.
>
> At the same, though, I agree with Lynn that this wasn't necessarily a
> "degeneration." Folk models of language play an important, sometimes
> Determinative, role in language policies, and beliefs and values regarding
>
> the supernatural are often a part of those folk models.
>
> > ...when something extremely pertinent is at hand.  How are we to express
> the
> > gender-neutral pronoun?  I tell my classes that it will be up to them to
>
> > figure this one out, but I would like to be a of a little more help to
> them
> > than that.  Is it true that "they" was once legitimately the
> gender-neutral
> > third-person singular pronoun?  How else, other than rewriting
> sentences, can
> > this issue be resolved.  One posting recently mentioned "yo" as a
> > gender-neutral pronoun, but I don't see that catching on.  Any other
> > inventions lately?
> >
> Yes, "they" has been, historically, used as a generic pronoun, and by some
>
> pretty good writers, too. For example:
>
> There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their
> well-acquainted friend
> — Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 3
> (1594)
>
> "To be sure, you knew no actual good of me -- but nobody thinks of that
> when
> they fall in love."
> __Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
>
> A person cannot help their birth.
> — Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848)
>
> And so on. So, I don't think we need to invent anything, and in any case
> inventing a pronoun (closed lexical class) is a lot harder than inventing
> nouns and verbs, which are open classes. (Note though that we already
> invented "y'all" and "youze," and "you-uns" to express second person
> plural,
> which "standard" English lacks, and some African American communities
> borrowed the Igbo second plural; "unu" to fill this gap.)
>
> The simplest and most elegant way to fix this, in my view, is to make
> generic sentences plural, so that "they" doesn't upset the Grammar Police.
>
> Ron
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20080304/77549dbc/attachment.htm>