[Lingtyp] Pronouns, politeness, political correctness

Wed May 10 15:29:23 UTC 2023

L1 English here (acquired in Seattle, WA, USA). "He" for a referent of
unknown gender sounds archaic and presumptuous to me.

Also, in the case of specific/known referents, using the pronouns that a
person says are correct for them is a simple matter of politeness. Refusing
to do so (or getting defensive when corrected) is rude. I see it as related
to but slightly different from continuing to use a nickname (or someone's
former last name if they've made a change, etc). Both names and gender as
reflected in pronouns are a matter of identity. To assert that someone
isn't the actual authority on what their own name is or what pronouns
accurately reflect their gender is to assert that you know better than them
something about their own identity.

I put "slightly different" above because I think that the way gender as a
category figures into identity is probably somewhat different to the way
names (which aren't categories in the same way, but might index some
categories) do. Also, the name/nick name choice connects with levels of
intimacy (as does title+last name/first name). These reflections are from
my position as a speaker of English, with experience with a few other
languages. It would be interested to look into a typology of what aspects
of identity/identity categories names can index as well as how naming
choices construct intimacy cross-linguistically.

In Seattle (where I still am) we now have fairly solid community norms
around indicating our own pronouns. This is considered polite, because it
saves other people from the uncomfortable position of having to guess which
pronouns to use (or having to ask, which can be somewhat awkward). We try
to do this in ways that are opt-in, so no one feels put on the spot to
declare their pronouns, and to be respectful about the information when we
have it -- i.e. to behave consistently with the fact that people are the
authorities on their own identities.

Emily

On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 5:18 PM Nicholas Kontovas <kontovas at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I sent a version of this message earlier, but realised just now I only
> sent it to Christian. Maybe it's just me, but as a native speaker of
> English, when there is a referent whose gender is unknown or a hypothetical
> referent of unspecified
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> I sent a version of this message earlier, but realised just now I only
> sent it to Christian.
>
> Maybe it's just me, but as a native speaker of English, when there is a
> referent whose gender is unknown or a hypothetical referent of unspecified
> gender, it actually sounds strange enough to border on ungrammatical to use
> third person singular masculine pronouns. It makes it seem as if there is a
> specific person of whom the speaker is aware but that they've forgotten to
> introduce them in the preceding discourse.
>
> I know there is no common gender non-specified third person singular
> pronoun in German, so knowing that Christian is German, I wouldn't have
> thought twice about the error unless he'd drawn attention to it. I would
> think it was just obvious interference from German. That said, it does seem
> bizarrely antagonistic to pre-empt any comments on it out of the blue.
> There are plenty of reasons not to prefer that construction that have
> nothing to do with "political correctness"; it just doesn't fit my native
> speaker intuition.
>
> If we'd like to make the discussion more linguistic, maybe other native
> English speakers can chime in with their judgements on "he" for referents
> of unspecified gender :-) Also, maybe mention your native dialect to see if
> that matters. Mine is working-class NYC metro area English.
>
> Best,
>
> Niko
>
> On Wed, 10 May 2023, 15:59 Christian Lehmann, <
> christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:
>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> I should, first of all, say that it was not my intention to start a
>> discussion on political correctness on this forum. On the one hand, it is
>> pretty clear that, among all genuinely linguistic issues, this is the one
>> which engages most people emotionally, which  means that a rational and
>> constructive discussion is very hard to conduct. On the other, one may ask
>> why this would be an appropriate topic for LingTyp. So, to repeat, the only
>> thing that I requested was that people refrain from criticizing or
>> commenting on other people's usage if political correctness is at stake. It
>> seems that nobody among those who have taken up the topic is really against
>> this request.
>>
>> This being said, it seems also clear that the issue involves a number of
>> problems that are of linguistic interest (although not necessarily of
>> typological interest). One is the question brought up by Maïa: Do we have a
>> right to determine our name? And further: Do we have a right to determine
>> how our people (our ethnos), town and our country are called? (Remember
>> that political correctness has often required speakers to stick to the most
>> recent redenomination realized by locals.)
>>
>> Another is the question of politeness brought up by Jürgen: If I use an
>> expression that some people find politically incorrect, at the same time
>> sincerely and  credibly assuring interlocutors that I mean no harm (and if
>> required, distancing myself explicitly from pejorative or otherwise
>> negative connotations that some people associate with it), is it then me
>> who is impolite or is it those people who insist that I speak otherwise?
>>
>> Again, these are issues of pragmatics rather than typology. But we
>> typologists are not really that narrow-minded; so if people want to take it
>> up, go ahead.
>>
>> Best,
>> Christian
>> --
>>
>> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
>> Rudolfstr. 4
>> 99092 Erfurt
>> Deutschland
>> Tel.: +49/361/2113417
>> E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
>> Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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