Gender neutrality and language

[Christina Paulston]

I must protest! "degenerated into a religious discussion" -- there are  
few topics so interesting to a sociolinguist - on several levels - as  
language and religion and very much left unexplored.  There are John  
Sawyer's SACRED  LANGUAGES AND SACRED TEXTS, 1999, AND William  
Samarin's LANGUAGE IN RELIGIOUS PRACTICE, 1976, but most of the  
literature is to be found in articles spread all over creation, and  
not very many at that. Bernard Spolsky's "Religion as a site of  
language contact", ANNUAL REVIEW OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS, 2003 is a  
place to start. Historians have written interesting stuff and Peter  
Burke's writings are well worth exploring.  So are SIL people and  
their dissertations.  Happy hunting, Jeff.  Christina
On Mar 3, 2008, at 9:12 PM, Ann Evans wrote:

> It's interesting that this post has degenerated into a religious  
> discussion 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?
>
> Ann
>
> On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 9:02 PM, Christina Paulston <paulston 
> + at pitt.edu> wrote:
> Yes, H L MecKen - thank you for the correction.  I have myself
> misattributed the quotation to an Arkansas principal, I think it was,
> so I feel honour bound to assign it properly. CBP
> On Mar 3, 2008, at 8:51 PM, Ronald Kephart wrote:
>
> > H. L. Mencken? Ron
> >
> >
> > On 3/3/08 8:48 PM, "Christina Paulston" <paulston+ at pitt.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> Just for the record  "if it was good enough for Jesus etc" is a  
> quote
> >> from Menchen.  (Did I misspell his name - my spelling checker  
> thinks
> >> so ?)
> >
>
>

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