As you know from listening to my podcast, I like to use unbiased language whenever I can. That’s language that is as free from gender assumptions as possible.
The APA has explicit guidelines for how to do this. You can find them here: http://is.gd/prz4 in the section titled “Unbiased language.” Watch it before reading my critique. It’s only about 1.5 minutes long.
What do you think? I think her solution is clunky and awkward. Furthermore, I disagree with her logic. She says you can’t use “they” as the gender neutral singular: “When a CEO wants to eat lunch, they go to the store.” You can’t use it because it’s “not proper grammar.”
If proper grammar is the metric, however, then isn’t he perfectly acceptable, proper, and supported by several centuries of usage?
She wants to adhere to the grammar rules, yet there are no grammar rules to handle this. That’s precisely the issue: we need a new guideline. I was hoping she would have a more creative solution than simply using “He or she” and then framing everything as a plural. Oh, well.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Cheryl Smith // Mar 28, 2009 at 5:37 pm
The old guidelines are archaic and clunky. I’m not sure what’s wrong with alternately using he/him and she/her throughout papers. But I do agree than using a child/they offends my grammatical senses.
How do you work through this in your own writings?
2 Lisa // Mar 28, 2009 at 5:45 pm
I remember this coming up in college. I’m really not sure why alternating is no longer permitted. Rewriting to avoid the use of pronouns as much as possible was also not suggested. Nor was something like ‘one’.
Invented gender neutral pronouns such as ’spivak,’ ’sie’, or ‘hir’ do exist. However, most are hard to pronounce and unfamiliar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun
3 Rachel // Mar 28, 2009 at 10:12 pm
I suggest we ask Grammar Girl. Oh wait – she already did a podcast on this, and stated that there really isn’t a good consensus on this yet. Her suggestion was to rework the sentence to avoid the use of “they” or “he or she”. That’s what I do – I can’t stand using “he or she”, it sounds corny. But the improper grammar of “they” for a gender neutral singular is equally painful to my ears, so I try and rework the sentence to avoid the pronoun altogether (or is it all together? I can never remember!).
4 Head // Mar 29, 2009 at 11:00 am
Considering using gender neutral pronouns.
5 Michael // Mar 29, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Is there an example in English grammar where we have already mastered the use of un-gendered language? I think there is. We say “When a horse wants to eat grass, we take it out to pasture.” So why not say “When a CEO wants to eat lunch, we take it to the store.”?
6 Bob Kerns // Mar 30, 2009 at 1:34 am
The whole thing is like pushing a string uphill.
Frankly, I think there are no good solutions, and the problem is simply not worth the pain. When you can avoid it without pain, do so. Otherwise, we should just accept that, at this point in time, the language is, as the language is.
Trying to pretend that the language is, as the language isn’t, should be regarded as intellectual dishonesty. And trying to force-change the language this way, amounts to pushing that string up that linguistic hill. And trying to do so, while demanding consistency, is sheer fantasy.
I don’t mind if the language changes to deemphasize gender, and using it only when it conveys something relevant. But gender in the language is NOT the cause, repeat, NOT the cause of gender inequality in the society. It is not even a symptom.
Nothing useful is being accomplished here.
7 Sarah Thompson // Apr 5, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Personally, I’d question the stressful thoughts I see here: I need to use the right pronoun, If I use the wrong pronoun the worst that will happen is…, If I use “he” for CEO or “she” for secretary, this proves gender bias, etc. To paraphrase Bob (above) “Insisting that the language is as the language isn’t, is arguing with reality”, and therefore stressful. When I write, I stick with standard grammar, with occasionally a s/he where it’s non-disruptive, and then stay out of my readers’ businesss.
8 Stever // Apr 5, 2009 at 4:51 pm
No stressful thoughts here. I want to use a mix of ethnicities and genders. Is there something stressful about that?
9 Paul Clee // Apr 15, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I agree that the best solution is usually to write your way out of the problem. In this case, “When CEOs want to eat lunch, they go to the store.” But the worm is turning, especially in the use of indefinite pronouns like “everone” and “everybody” (as in “Everybody has their own style”).
I’m an ex-English teacher, now writing and doing freelance copyediting and proofreading. You folks might be interested in what one of my most dependable reference books has to say about this: “The tide has now turned, and the newer grammar books recommend usiing the plural pronoun after an indefinite subject….To assuage those who denounce this construction as a new barbarism, DEU [Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage] notes that the use of plural pronouns in reference to indefinite subjects has a four-hundred-year history in English literature and that the pluralizers are in the majority in Merriam-Webster’s files of twentieth-century citations.”
But wait! There’s more. “The Univerrsity of Chicago Press recommends the ‘revival’ of the singular use of ‘they’ and ‘their,’ citing…its venerable use by such writers as Addison, Austen, Chesterfield, Fielding, Ruskin, Scott, and Shakespeare.”
From The Copyeditor’s Handbook, by Amy Einsohn.
So there you have it, but please beware that if you put an “Everyone…their….” in a college paper–especially an English paper–you’re definitely living dangerously.
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