Can this be posted? (Re: he/she)
Anna McCaslin SAB
jessica <pol...@husc.harvard.edu>:
>> [A teacher] read a long passage about "the law student
>> should..," which refered to "the law student" as "he" throughout. He
>> then asked us to name the student mentioned in the passage. Everyone
>> wrote downa male name. A different class, gived a similar, truely
>> gender-neutral passage, wrote down a mix of women's and men's names.
Mikelis Bickis <BIC...@sask.usask.ca>:
>What this example demonstrates depends on what the passages were saying.
>If the first passage was referring to an *individual* law student as
>'he', then the inference that *this* law student was male is quite
>appropriate. Similarly, it matters on what you mean by the second
>passage being 'gender-neutral'. If it actually contained expressions
>such as "he or she", it rather invites the class to consider women's
>names.
But when the passages say only "he" when referring to a non-specific
individual, that rather invites the class to consider only men's names.
Mikelis:
>I also
>find consistent use of constructions like "s/he" or "(s)he" if not
>offensive, at least awkward. Saying "he or she" can at least be read
>out loud, but can become tedious if used repeatedly. I would welcome a
>generally accepted inclusive pronoun, but I am too conservative to use
>things like "E"/"Em"/"Eir" myself. So I usually use just "he", but I
>will throw in a feminine pronoun once in a while to indicate that my
>usage is not sex specific.
When I was in high school, my senior English teacher told us to each
write an essay about some aspect of the English language that we would
like to see changed. I chose to write about creating a gender-neutral
pronoun. The following is an excerpt from that essay, written on
November 22, 1989.
...
What should that pronoun be? Some people suggest "ne" because
"n" is halfway between "h" and "s." However, "ne" sounds too
much like "me" and might cause some confusion.
Perhaps the neutral pronoun should simply be "e." Since the
other single-letter pronoun, "I," is capitalized, so should
"E" be.
Next, the counterpart of "him or her" is needed. One alternative
might be taking the "e" from "her" and the "m" from "him" and
forming "em." However, many dialexts use "'em" as a shortened
form of "them," which would make it difficult to know if a
person saying "em" were speaking in the singular or the plural.
Another acceptable compromise might be taking the "i" from
"him" and the "r" from "her." Then the objective case pronoun
would be "ir." ("Ir" is pronounced like "ear.") "Ir" is not
easily confused with other pronouns.
Now, a possessive form is needed. Simply add an "s" to "ir"
to get "irs" (not to be confused with IRS).
...
Using the new pronouns would eliminate the unwieldy "he or she"
and "one" problems. Of course, the sound of the new words in
a sentence will take some getting used to. After all, once a
person has learned a language and has spoken it all irs life,
E might find it difficult to accept changes. E might perceive
the new pronouns as something created to annoy ir and to
disrupt irs ACT scores.
I had never heard of any other gender-neutral pronouns at the time I
wrote that. (Except, of course, for the "ne" that our teacher told us
about. He didn't tell us what the "him or her" or "his or hers" counterparts
to "ne" were, though.) Now that I have net-access, I have seen some others
in use, some very similar to mine, some that I like more than mine. But I
thought I'd offer my suggestion anyway.
Anj Kroeger
sa...@zeus.unomaha.edu
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Patricia Shanahan
>(Anna McCaslin SAB) writes:
> Using the new pronouns would eliminate the unwieldy "he or
> she" and "one" problems. Of course, the sound of the new
> words in a sentence will take some getting used to. After
> all, once a person has learned a language and has spoken it
> all irs life, E might find it difficult to accept changes. E
> might perceive the new pronouns as something created to annoy
> ir and to disrupt irs ACT scores.
>
>I had never heard of any other gender-neutral pronouns at the time I
>wrote that. (Except, of course, for the "ne" that our teacher told
>us about. He didn't tell us what the "him or her" or "his or hers"
>counterparts to "ne" were, though.) Now that I have net-access, I
>have seen some others in use, some very similar to mine, some that I
>like more than mine. But I thought I'd offer my suggestion anyway.
>
Using the new pronouns would eliminate the unwieldy "he or
she" and "one" problems. Of course, the sound of the new
words in a sentence will take some getting used to. After
all, once a person has learned a language and has spoken it
all their life, they might find it difficult to accept
changes. They might perceive the new pronouns as something
created to annoy them and to disrupt their ACT scores.
Did you consider the possibility of using they/them as 3rd person
singular gender neutral pronouns? It is usually easier and more
natural to shift the meaning of existing words than to introduce
completely new words.
The English language has already adapted to the use of plural pronouns
to refer to one person, purely for reasons of politeness. As a result,
we know how it should be done. Keep the verb forms usually associated
with the plural pronoun. Use the various forms of the plural pronoun
appropriately.
Many English speakers, reading my version of your paragraph, would not
even be aware of the gender-neutral adaptation. It is something that
children have to be taught NOT to do. If teachers just stopped
"correcting" the use of they/them for 3rd person singular for a
generation, the whole problem of gender neutral writing would go away
automatically.
--
Patricia Shanahan
p...@fps.com
uucp : ucsd!celerity!ps
phone: (619) 271-9940