InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "have a lovely buncha coconuts"

the escaped logician (cadence) wrote in discadence,
@ 2008-11-11 20:09:00

I am a (occasionally neurotic) linguistics dork
Somewhat predictably, my spike of outgoing productivity has been followed immediately by a minor bout of "arrgh no one likes me I am braindead everything I say is coming out wrong why did I ever think I could be clever arrgh", which is never fun even when I've identified it as such. But! I'm totally GETTING OVER IT, which is why I am posting.

...Fortunately I have something more interesting to post about than that. >_>

So! On the shuttle coming home from work today, the radio (NPR, possibly?) was talking about international politics. The part that I found kind of odd was that they kept saying things like "the next US president" - not once in the ten minutes or so I was on the shuttle did they use Obama's name. They were being ambiguous about names more generally, too, but we did get "the Bush administration" at least once.

The part that I found most interesting was this sentence (possibily paraphrased; from memory):

What should the next US president - or, for that matter, their secretary of defense... ah, what should they do, if they start hearing reports of further violent actions in Iraq?

The part that caught my attention there is the pronouns! Particularly the first one. "their secretary of defense"? That's "Obama's secretary of defense" - the gender isn't at all ambiguous, so they could have said "his" quite reasonably.

But I'm glad they didn't! I'm a big supporter of using "they" as a singular pronoun when the gender is ambiguous - and also when it's not ambiguous, but that still seems a lot more awkward to people. But this is an example of it maybe becoming less awkward!

Although it probably was caused by the fact that they were trying so hard to be ambiguous about it even though it's not, which I still don't really understand.

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	regicidaldwarf 2008-11-12 12:49 am UTC (link)
	...Huh! I...really have no idea why they would do that. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	cadence 2008-11-12 05:34 pm UTC (link)
	I dunno! It was really strange. It was the pronouns that made me notice it at first, but then I paid more attention, and all of the people talking were using the same phrasing. Kind of odd. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	lassarina 2008-11-12 09:29 am UTC (link)
	That's....strange and interesting. (Using 'they' as a singular pronoun offends my grammar-perfectionist tendencies, yet as English does not possess a reasonable construction for expressing indeterminate/unspecified/ambiguous gender, I am not sure what other options there might be.) (Reply to this) (Thread)

cadence
2008-11-12 05:42 pm UTC (link)

Is this where I bring out the "it was an approved use for 'they' until sometime about a century ago some guy in England decreed that everyone should be using 'he' instead, and it's always been in use colloquially" argument? Because I could find the details for that again. ^^;

Really, though, I am extremely fond of grammar myself (words mean things! sentence structure is there for a reason!), but I don't think "because it's wrong" is a good argument for not using it, no matter the history. It serves to communicate something useful, which is what language is for. :D

Of course, people will do whatever they want with language whatever I think. That's part of why it's fun. </linguistic descriptivist>

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

lassarina
2008-11-12 05:44 pm UTC (link)

I just remember having it hammered into my head, repeatedly, that 'they' as singular was wrong. But that's an interesting historical tidbit; I will file that away. (I've always used it colloquially myself, but try to avoid it in the written word. What we really need is a proper pronoun for it, in my opinion, but I'm weird).

It's true. I mean, just look at lolcats!

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cadence
2008-11-12 05:50 pm UTC (link)

Hammering is clearly the best method of persuasion. >_>;

I wouldn't mind having a specific pronoun for it! The usage of 'they' shifting (again) seems a lot more likely to actually happen, though.

...Actually, if I could just make English do what I wanted I would not only create a gender-indefinite pronoun but kill "he" and "she" entirely, probably. That would go a long way towards breaking ridiculous gender categories, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis style.

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	lassarina 2008-11-12 05:51 pm UTC (link)
	I don't know. I would find it much more challenging to write - in a not-fun way! - if that were the case. But maybe I'm weird and hidebound. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	cadence 2008-11-12 05:57 pm UTC (link)
	In that you would have the same problems writing het as writing slash, in the way where the pronouns keep getting crossed? Yeah, I can see that. Would probably end up having to use names more (like I end up doing writing slash), or other constructs (you could still say "the girl" or things like that). ...Kind of like Japanese does, most of the time, I think? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	lassarina 2008-11-12 05:58 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah. It's just that sometimes I really like the ambiguity and flexibility of writing a story with pronouns only, instead of having to use names...and epithets can start to grate. I don't know. I just feel like we should have a third personal pronoun, instead of just the two. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

cadence
2008-11-12 06:11 pm UTC (link)

Well, but... you can only really do that any better now if the people you're writing about use different pronouns. Otherwise you still have to use names or epithets. Why should gender be the defining trait?

And having a third pronoun used for specific people such as to not identify them as either male or female (as opposed to used when it's ambiguous who you're talking about) is kind of... just creating a third category. So you have "male", "female", and "undefined". That's better than two categories! And I definitely support the use of a third set of pronouns for people who prefer them. But it still means you're gender-categorizing people every time you refer to them - or specifically and noticeably declining to.

So, yeah. If I had the magic power to make everyone start actively using a gender-indefinite pronoun, I'd also magically make them use it for everyone.

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	lassarina 2008-11-12 06:12 pm UTC (link)
	I guess that makes sense :) It might not be the way I'd go about it, but I'm also too brain-frazzled to figure out how I would go about it. So. (Reply to this) (Parent)