On the lack of certain English pronouns

[MontyVeda]

A lot of colleagues list their preferred pronouns in their signature of work emails. eg. he/him/his.
I don't list mine but i am tempted to have them as it/that.

 

[Punkawallah]

Amazing all that's going on in the world and people fuss over words........

While it’s important to have perspective, it’s also important to recognise words are powerful things. Changing their meaning can have all sorts of unintended consequences.

 

[oldandslow]

Really showing my age and linguistic conservatism but:

• It seems to me that better English often results if you simply write the whole sentence in the plural, and avoid creating an issue for yourself in the first place. Rather than:
  • When I ask a staff member for help, she/he/they...
  • When I ask staff members for help, they...
• I find it slightly odd for people to give me their (third-person) pronouns when it's usually considered rude to talk in the third person about someone who is present. The form of address I normally use is "You", which is gender-neutral in the first place. On the rare occasions when I need to talk about people in their absence (see what I did there?), I'm probably going to be using their given names. So I'm not too sure what to do with the information.
• It's really quite unfortunate that the pronoun "one" should have passed out of use only a decade or two before all this became a concern, as it also offers genuine neutrality.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Oh, please, for the love of <insert preferred deity here>, can someone please invent (and enforce) singular versions of the English third person gender-neutral pronouns? Instead of they/them/their, we should have singular pronouns in the subjective/objective/possessive cases (or nominative/accusative/genitive, if you prefer).

Right, got that off my back.

It's the "Enforce" part of that post that bothers me.

Once we start talking about enforcing speech, either culturally or legally, we are in a dangerous place, especially when it's on such a controversial subject where people will disagree: it begins to sound like one group is saying "we believe this, so you have to speak to us as if you agree".

You can believe what you wish about yourself and your identity, I may agree or disagree, but please don't demand that I "must" agree automatically, and if I don't, you have no more right to demand I say a certain thing, than I have to demand you live a certain way.

 

[Punkawallah]

It's the "Enforce" part of that post that bothers me.

Once we start talking about enforcing speech, either culturally or legally, we are in a dangerous place, especially when it's on such a controversial subject where people will disagree: it begins to sound like one group is saying "we believe this, so you have to speak to us as if you agree".

You can believe what you wish about yourself and your identity, I may agree or disagree, but please don't demand that I "must" agree automatically, and if I don't, you have no more right to demand I say a certain thing, than I have to demand you live a certain way.

Professor Peterson went through this whole thing with his employers, and it resulted in quite the kerfuffle.
I do wonder about the expectations to address kings as ‘Your Majesty’, judges as ‘Your Honour’, and people who think they are entitled to be called whatever they decide as . . . whatever that happens to be.

 

[markemark]

It's the "Enforce" part of that post that bothers me.

Once we start talking about enforcing speech, either culturally or legally, we are in a dangerous place, especially when it's on such a controversial subject where people will disagree: it begins to sound like one group is saying "we believe this, so you have to speak to us as if you agree".

You can believe what you wish about yourself and your identity, I may agree or disagree, but please don't demand that I "must" agree automatically, and if I don't, you have no more right to demand I say a certain thing, than I have to demand you live a certain way.

Things change and the world moves on. Sone years ago things that seem quite unsavoury now were “acceptable” language then. I’m not talking about deliberate offensive language but the casual sexism and racism that was endemic in society and the work place. Women and people of different ethnicity were called all sorts of things. Without malice but still derogatory.

I’ve always called her darling, she doesn’t mind and I call everyone darling, it’s just easier. His name is so hard to say so we just called him Jonny.

Several generations of such language that at some point enough people said enough, it needs to be changed. So very similar to now, language and the way people spoke had to change. I suspect there was similar resistance and similar arguments to now.

 

[DaveReading]

All this fuss about third-person pronouns, and not a whisper about the ambiguity of the second-person pronoun (as to whether it's singular or plural).

I think youse are missing the point ...

 

[Ian H]

[*]When I ask a staff member for help, she/he/they...
[*]When I ask staff members for help, they...

"I asked a staff member for help and they told me to bugger off" is perfectly good English and always has been.

 

[DRM]

Things change and the world moves on. Sone years ago things that seem quite unsavoury now were “acceptable” language then. I’m not talking about deliberate offensive language but the casual sexism and racism that was endemic in society and the work place. Women and people of different ethnicity were called all sorts of things. Without malice but still derogatory.

I’ve always called her darling, she doesn’t mind and I call everyone darling, it’s just easier. His name is so hard to say so we just called him Jonny.

Several generations of such language that at some point enough people said enough, it needs to be changed. So very similar to now, language and the way people spoke had to change. I suspect there was similar resistance and similar arguments to now.

It also went both ways, try working in a factory full of women, who quite often would be equally coarse & intimidating to any male who appeared on the shop floor

 

[markemark]

It also went both ways, try working in a factory full of women, who quite often would be equally coarse & intimidating to any male who appeared on the shop floor

100%. The point is that there was a huge amount of race, ethnicity and gender language which quite rightly was callled out and changed. It had to be enforced. Many would have argued about the change. Many parallels to now.

 

[yello]

You can believe what you wish about yourself and your identity, I may agree or disagree, but please don't demand that I "must" agree automatically, and if I don't, you have no more right to demand I say a certain thing, than I have to demand you live a certain way.

I listened to a linguistics prof (a New Yorker?) on YouTube on this subject. Much to my surprise, he was pretty strident and forthright. He said (and I paraphrase) 'I will use your preferred pronouns when speaking to you, out of respect, but you don't get to tell me what to use outside of that context'

 

[markemark]

I listened to a linguistics prof (a New Yorker?) on YouTube on this subject. Much to my surprise, he was pretty strident and forthright. He said (and I paraphrase) 'I will use your preferred pronouns when speaking to you, out of respect, but you don't get to tell me what to use outside of that context'

It’s entirely possible that linguistic experts can be bigoted, sexist and intolerant. Not suggesting for one second that this prof is. But using language correctly and historically relevant does not exclude being offensive. Language evolves. What was correct 20 years ago may not be correct today. All sorts of words and phrases have changed meaning. Fukck used to mean moving back and forth. Would anybody argue it is acceptable to use that in a worker description? No. Things have moved on. Language will move on again. And then again.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Things change and the world moves on. Sone years ago things that seem quite unsavoury now were “acceptable” language then. I’m not talking about deliberate offensive language but the casual sexism and racism that was endemic in society and the work place. Women and people of different ethnicity were called all sorts of things. Without malice but still derogatory.

I’ve always called her darling, she doesn’t mind and I call everyone darling, it’s just easier. His name is so hard to say so we just called him Jonny.

Several generations of such language that at some point enough people said enough, it needs to be changed. So very similar to now, language and the way people spoke had to change. I suspect there was similar resistance and similar arguments to now.

I have no issue with respecting people, my concern is the enforced aspect. To use your examples, asking someone not to use a "pet" name or nickname out of respect is very different to asking someone to change their pronoun on the basis of what I believe.

I think the better parallel would be Blasphemy Laws: these were repealed on the quite reasonable basis that one group may believe in a certain deity, but that doesn't mean they get to dictate what someone outside their group can or can't say on the basis of their belief. Indeed, it's impossible to do this in a liberal society because people have widely differing opinions and world views, which often contradict each other.

The alternative would be a sort of "Battle Royal" where all the different groups vie to become the dominant one that gets to decide what is "Blasphemy", ie. how others should speak to fit their beliefs, and "enforce" their world view. This would seem the opposite of progressive and liberal values, and reminiscent of many "isms" we would wish to leave behind.

 

[yello]

You're speaking to the converted @markemark. Equally I would not attempt to force folk to use a specified form just to appease my sensibilities.

 

[winjim]

All this fuss about third-person pronouns, and not a whisper about the ambiguity of the second-person pronoun (as to whether it's singular or plural).

I think youse are missing the point ...

I think all y'all need to calm down.