4 ms·

It is in fact quite common (at least in some parts) to use singular they for people of known gender. I hear it all the time here in London. Here’s an abstract t

by foldr 4y ago

It is in fact quite common (at least in some parts) to use singular they for people of known gender. I hear it all the time here in London. Here’s an abstract that covers some of the patterns of variation: https://www.colorado.edu/event/cuny2019/sites/default/files/attached-files/a67_camilliere_etal.pdf https://www.colorado.edu/event/cuny2019/sites/default/files/... There’s even an example in Shakespeare: “There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend.” It would clearly be ok to use ‘his’ here, but we find ‘their’ nonetheless. > could also be offended to be referred to as "they" because it could imply that the person is in-between ‘They’ is gender neutral; its use implies nothing about a person’s gender. If someone gets offended anyway then the simplest solution is obvious - use their preferred pronoun. But taking offense at singular they doesn’t seem to be something common, at least in my experience. It’s certainly the option that’s least likely to cause serious offense if you can’t remember (or were never told) a person’s preferred pronouns. If we’re ok with cis people being fussy about being referred to using singular they, then presumably we must also allow trans or non-binary people to be fussy about their own preferred pronouns. > [older people] may be confused Confused != offended. But singular they has such a long history that I think such confusion is rather unlikely in practice. (Are older people confused by the Shakespeare quote above?)

strix_varius 4y ago
As soon as you reach for Shakespeare in order to justify a word's usage in vernacular English, it's clear that you've missed the point.
- foldr 4y ago
  The point in this case was simply that singular they isn't a recent phenomenon. This is relevant when considering the (probably incorrect) claim that singular they is confusing for older generations. In any case, my mention of Shakespeare was an aside and not crucial to the overall argument of my post. So it is arguably you who are missing the point.
gnicholas 4y ago
> taking offense at singular they doesn’t seem to be something common That's probably because most people don't refer to people as "they" except when specifically asked to. If people went around using "they" as the standard pronoun when referring to known people, there would be much more offense.
- foldr 4y ago
  I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that point. I often hear 'they' used in that way and have not see anyone take offense to it. Nor can I see any logical reason why people should take offense. There are plenty of languages where pronouns are gender neutral (e.g. spoken Chinese). People who speak these languages seem to do ok without constantly explicitly referencing each other's gender. There's a huge difference, both logically and emotionally, between misgendering someone and simply not making reference to their gender. By the way, I am totally fine with not using singular they to refer to people who are genuinely offended by it. I just have not actually encountered any such person outside the class of 'argumentative people on the internet'. For this reason I think that 'use singular they if unsure' is good, though not infallible, advice.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    > There's a huge difference, both logically and emotionally, between misgendering someone and simply not making reference to their gender. Referring to someone as a "they" would be considered misgendering to a lot of people. It is not "not making reference to their gender" because the vast majority of people who want to be referred to as "they" are not cisgender. Referring to someone in this way suggests that you think they are not cisgender. > I just have not actually encountered any such person outside the class of 'argumentative people on the internet'. The neighbor who approached me after having been referred to as "they" was not an argumentative person on the internet. She was someone (who lives in a very liberal area, BTW) who was perplexed and offended to have been referred to that way.
    - foldr 4y ago
      I see what you mean, but I think it's slightly the wrong analysis on a linguistic level. 'They' doesn't generally introduce a presupposition of non-binarity (either semantically or via pragmatic inference). If it did, it would be hard to account for the innumerable examples of 'they' being used with unambiguously masculine and feminine quantificational antecedents. For this reason I think that people who are offended by being referred to by 'they' are wrong to be offended. I think they're wrong in a way that, say, a trans woman is not wrong to be offended if someone insists on using 'he'. In the former case, the person may feel that they are being misgendered – but only on the basis of a dodgy linguistic analysis. Of course, we should accommodate people's pronoun preferences, regardless of whether we agree with their underlying logic in any given case. The story about your neighbor doesn't really make sense to me. Surely it occurred to her that the other forum poster might not have cared much what her gender was, or have paid much attention to her photo, or simply didn't care to take a guess even if she appeared clearly female. To interpret this as intentional misgendering seems a bit nuts. If she was simply worried about whether she appeared clearly feminine in the photo, then that's an understandable anxiety, but one that has little to do with singular they. (If singular they were off limits then I guess the poster might have used 'he' instead, which hardly seems better.)

by foldr 4y ago

strix_varius 4y ago

As soon as you reach for Shakespeare in order to justify a word's usage in vernacular English, it's clear that you've missed the point.

foldr 4y ago
The point in this case was simply that singular they isn't a recent phenomenon. This is relevant when considering the (probably incorrect) claim that singular they is confusing for older generations. In any case, my mention of Shakespeare was an aside and not crucial to the overall argument of my post. So it is arguably you who are missing the point.

gnicholas 4y ago

> taking offense at singular they doesn’t seem to be something common That's probably because most people don't refer to people as "they" except when specifically asked to. If people went around using "they" as the standard pronoun when referring to known people, there would be much more offense.

foldr 4y ago
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that point. I often hear 'they' used in that way and have not see anyone take offense to it. Nor can I see any logical reason why people should take offense. There are plenty of languages where pronouns are gender neutral (e.g. spoken Chinese). People who speak these languages seem to do ok without constantly explicitly referencing each other's gender. There's a huge difference, both logically and emotionally, between misgendering someone and simply not making reference to their gender. By the way, I am totally fine with not using singular they to refer to people who are genuinely offended by it. I just have not actually encountered any such person outside the class of 'argumentative people on the internet'. For this reason I think that 'use singular they if unsure' is good, though not infallible, advice.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  > There's a huge difference, both logically and emotionally, between misgendering someone and simply not making reference to their gender. Referring to someone as a "they" would be considered misgendering to a lot of people. It is not "not making reference to their gender" because the vast majority of people who want to be referred to as "they" are not cisgender. Referring to someone in this way suggests that you think they are not cisgender. > I just have not actually encountered any such person outside the class of 'argumentative people on the internet'. The neighbor who approached me after having been referred to as "they" was not an argumentative person on the internet. She was someone (who lives in a very liberal area, BTW) who was perplexed and offended to have been referred to that way.
  - foldr 4y ago
    I see what you mean, but I think it's slightly the wrong analysis on a linguistic level. 'They' doesn't generally introduce a presupposition of non-binarity (either semantically or via pragmatic inference). If it did, it would be hard to account for the innumerable examples of 'they' being used with unambiguously masculine and feminine quantificational antecedents. For this reason I think that people who are offended by being referred to by 'they' are wrong to be offended. I think they're wrong in a way that, say, a trans woman is not wrong to be offended if someone insists on using 'he'. In the former case, the person may feel that they are being misgendered – but only on the basis of a dodgy linguistic analysis. Of course, we should accommodate people's pronoun preferences, regardless of whether we agree with their underlying logic in any given case. The story about your neighbor doesn't really make sense to me. Surely it occurred to her that the other forum poster might not have cared much what her gender was, or have paid much attention to her photo, or simply didn't care to take a guess even if she appeared clearly female. To interpret this as intentional misgendering seems a bit nuts. If she was simply worried about whether she appeared clearly feminine in the photo, then that's an understandable anxiety, but one that has little to do with singular they. (If singular they were off limits then I guess the poster might have used 'he' instead, which hardly seems better.)