Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lanl.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!teddy!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!cmcl2!lanl!jlg From: jlg@lanl.ARPA Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Gender-specific responses to s/he (their) Message-ID: <19239@lanl.ARPA> Date: Thu, 10-Jan-85 14:58:47 EST Article-I.D.: lanl.19239 Posted: Thu Jan 10 14:58:47 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 13-Jan-85 06:48:22 EST References: <218@cmu-cs-cad.ARPA> <299@scc.UUCP> <295@zinfandel.UUCP> Sender: newsreader@lanl.ARPA Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory Lines: 33 > Simply put, 'they' and 'their' have been used in this way for centuries, > and people are not about to stop now. If it's good enough for Shakespeare, > Milton and Wordsworth, it's good enough for me. > > Furthermore, s/he and the ilk are ugly and tend to derail my train of thought. Use of the plurals derails my thought train. take: The pilot of a single place aircraft should take care of their health so as to always remain alert. Who's health? Is taking care of a lot of people's health a known way of keeping alert? To me the word 'their' is clearly not a reference to 'the pilot'. In this case I would use 'his', though 'his/her' would be more acceptable than 'their'. (When I use 'his' in a place like this I don't usually think of a male person - just a person. Maybe it's because my first flight instructor was female (-8 )). Some places the use of the plural pronoun is acceptable. The singular words 'everyone' and 'noone' take the plural pronoun fairly naturally since both include (or exclude) large classes of people. But if the referent of the pronoun in both syntactically and semantically singular (especially if the number is explicitly given), then the plural pronoun seems VERY unnatural. Note that the list of famous writers who used the plural pronoun in this way ALWAYS used it only for those referents that were semantically plural (everyone, noone, etc.). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Women have always had their own pronouns, men have to share theirs - the language is therefore biased in favour of women. (*8 James Giles