Political correctness enshrined! ADS makes singular 'they', gender-neutral pronoun, the word of the year.

Interesting that you saw it that way. My reaction was more about the plural word being made singular. I'll have to get used to that.

I'm puzzled as to why a word used in a context that its been used in for hundreds of years should be considered political correctness.

Me, too, Bob. Nice link, goofy. I've not used it that way before, but perhaps I'll start.

Oy they!

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Me, too, Bob. Nice link, goofy. I've not used it that way before, but perhaps I'll start.

You've never said something like "everyone knows themselves"?

You know, Goofy, I reread my own post before seeing your post above and thought, "What did I mean?" Of course I've used it that way. I confess, I don't know what I meant. Perhaps it was just too late.

The part I don't like about some of these articles is that they assume the singular "they" was chosen as the word of the year to be politically correct. I think instead it was chosen because more and more people were using the singular "they" in situations like, "Everyone is laughing because they saw the panda playing in the snow." How else would it be said? I think the media is placing way too much attention on the gender neutral part of it, instead of the grammatical need for it. And, as Bob (and Language Log) says, it has been used that way for hundreds of years anyway. So it really isn't that new.

Sorry about the confusion, goofy. Clearly I confused myself, too.

Hey, Kalleh, just catching up on this thread. I should have also linked to the WaPo article that originally caught my attention.

Clearly, 'singular they' has been around a long time to deal with a singular predicate that refers to a group (like 'everyone'). It is also handy for an unspecified singular subject, as in 'Any student will tell you that they...' I was OK with the traditional 'general he', but I can see some rationale for adopting gender-neutral language post-feminism, & 'they' is superior to the self-consciously PC 'he/she' (or worse, arbitrarily choosing 'she' 50% of the time!) Also useful for a specific subject whose identity must be protected (including gender), like a suspect or witness.

Apparently the 'new' idea is to expand its usage to specified, even named singular subjects, regardless of whether the sentence 'sounds right', so as to avoid referring to gender in any way. Just in case THEY use the third rest room!

English used to have a pronoun that referred to specified individuals of either gender: a. In the first quote it refers to a woman, in the second it refers to a man:


1387 J. Trevisa MS. Cott. Vesp. D. vii. 29 b, He ran home to uore & prayede hys wyf þat hue wolde helpe for to saue hym,‥bote a dude þe contrary.

"He ran home in advance and prayed that his wife would help save him… but she did the opposite."


c1400 J. Trevisa tr. R. Higden Polychron. (Tiber. D. vii) vi. xxix, in R. Morris & W. W. Skeat Specim. Early Eng. (1884) II. 243 Kynge Edward hadde byhote duc William þat a [a1387 St. John's Cambr. he] scholde be kynge after hym ef he dyede wyþoute chyldern.

"King Edward had promised duke William that he should be king after him if he died without children."

That is so interesting, goofy. Is there anywhere I can read more about that "a" online?

I came across this post while hunting. Lots of info on the evolution of pronouns in English.

I learned about it from Dennis Baron's book on grammar and gender.

http://www.english.illinois.ed...y/debaron/index.html