Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!matt From: matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt ) Newsgroups: net.nlang,net.women Subject: Re: Pronouns devoid of gender connotations Message-ID: <11369@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Tue, 2-Jul-85 17:47:49 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.11369 Posted: Tue Jul 2 17:47:49 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Jul-85 04:30:41 EDT References: <2718@decwrl.UUCP>, <498@rtech.UUCP> <743@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 46 Xref: watmath net.nlang:3330 net.women:6247 >> Stick with "Standard English": >> >> "If you should happen to see someone, say hello to him." >> >> The argument here is that this is gramatically correct, >> and has served for many years. >Sort of; in any event that's how proponents of this option would put >it. But what that means in this context is mostly "this is what has >traditionally been urged". > What has to be argued out about this option is whether there's >anything wrong with it. After all, a normative grammarian urging this >would not be able to stop others from speaking however they want, e.g. >using "they" -- as S. Pemberton's citations from the OED pointed up, >that alternative has survived for 600 years. What has happened is >that the shoe is on the other foot. This Standard usage has come >under attack from feminists as inherently reflecting assumptions about >sex roles (including people like me who take a descriptivist stand and >write words like "normative" and "prescriptive" with an ugly leer, yet >feel no contradiction in becoming rather prescriptive ourselves as >part of a social program. There's no real contradiction, and I'll >happily defend that combination of stances some other time, if anyone >bothers to flame me as a hypocrite). I won't flame you as a hypocrite, but I would like to read your defense of the combination of prescriptivism-as-part-of-a-social-program and descriptivism. Also, why do you think this particular prescriptivist change will succeed when so many other prescriptions have been ignored by speakers of natural language for so many years? Also, to what extent should the prescription against the "generic" he/him/his be enforced? Very often, I read a disclaimer at the beginning of a book to the effect that "the masculine pronoun includes the feminine unless there is an explicit statement to the contrary." Is this enough, or should publishers adhere strictly to the Guidelines for Equal Treatment of the Sexes in [fill in the publisher's name] Publications" that most of them adopted in the 1970's? Should a George Gilder have to go to New Orleans to get his book published? And what about speech? Should one react to a speaker's use of he/him/his in the same way as to the use of a vulgar pejorative for a nationality, religion or ethnic group? -- Matt Rosenblatt (matt@amsaa.ARPA)