[Lingtyp] 回复: Pronouns, politeness, political correctness

Thu May 11 09:18:15 UTC 2023

This is interesting. At least in Mandarin, Korean and Japanese, it is not polite to use third-person pronouns in interviews. It is common to address a third person in an interview using the structure "surname + title". This may be related to the type of word order, but in VO languages there is a preference for "title + surname". Is that so?

Lixin

________________________________
发件人: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> 代表 Emily M. Bender <ebender at uw.edu>
发送时间: 2023年5月10日 17:29
收件人: Nicholas Kontovas <kontovas at gmail.com>
抄送: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
主题: Re: [Lingtyp] Pronouns, politeness, political correctness

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<mailto: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<mailto: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

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