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It is, but it causes ambiguity. “The politician made a statement to the press. They were shocked” Who does “they” refer to there?
by cgrealy 5y ago
It is, but it causes ambiguity.
“The politician made a statement to the press. They were shocked”
Who does “they” refer to there?
- notahacker 5y agoExactly the same amount of ambiguity as "The politician addressed Other Male Politician. He was shocked"...
- concordDance 5y agoYes, but it still substantially reduces the number of ambiguous situations, which is an improvement to the language.
- Ma8ee 5y agoIf that is your concern, just use the noun. “The politician made a statement to the press. The politician was shocked.” Or if that is too inelegant, reformulate the sentence: “The politician expressed his shock to the press.” Or use the verb to carry the information that you are referring to the singular: “They was shocked.”, but I guess that would be painful to read for some native English speakers.
- cgrealy 5y agoYeah, but there’s no good solution there. If you use a pronoun that can apply to multiple subjects or objects in a sentence, it will always be ambiguous.
- notahacker 5y ago> If you use a pronoun that can apply to multiple subjects or objects in a sentence, it will always be ambiguous. My point exactly. There's nothing inherently unique about singular "they" in that respect. Sure, there are certain circumstances in which a gendered pronoun removes ambiguity, just as honorifics or age/social status based pronouns would remove ambiguity in many instances involving multiple male subjects/objects if English used them (like some other languages do), but that really isn't a reason not to use singular "they" with the same degree of care to avoid ambiguity one also has to use "he" and "she".