| Regarding the English language gender-neutral pronoun problem: Which do you prefer? (The laughing person is of unknown sex.) |
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Regarding the English language gender-neutral pronoun problem: Which do you prefer? (The laughing person is of unknown sex.)
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Asked 3 years ago
by elwyatt  United States |
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About
I'm a geeky electrical engineer, raised in Hawaii, surfer, tennis player, webmaster, entrepreneur, with my own take on things.
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9 Points
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This comment was deleted by elwyatt .
[1 point] 3 years ago byThe person laughed.
You've addressed the issue by avoiding it. It's a clever way out, but sometimes sounds awkward.
This comment was deleted.
[1 point] 3 years ago by deleted user Replylol - the answer to that question could possibly reveal a lot about the sex of the person laughing.
When speaking I would almost certainly use "they laughed". Actually in our region, using "they" is very common even if the sex of the person in question is known.
In writing also I would likely use they because it's less cumbersome than giving options and more correct than using either he or she. I think I would only use he/she or s/he if I specifically wanted to avoid the possible ambiguity that "they" could cause, namely that it might refer to more than one person.
My usage agrees with yours.
use "it laughed" :)
In the lead sentence start by making it clear whether the person in the room is a man or a women, then say "he laughed" or "she laughed."
That's fine if if the writer knows the gender. The problem arises a lot in writing copy trying to sell a product. The product might be purchased for someone of either sex. How do you describe all the ways the product might be used and its benefits to the user, without implying significant gender bias, if you can't use he/she, his/her pronouns? If every reader recognized that he/his also implies she/her (and I suppose, vice versa), it would be much less of a problem. But we are so tuned into to sex differences that it is a big problem. Do I have to write differently to sell trains to girls and dolls to boys, or can I gracefully write copy that works for any situation?
Micheal Newdow tackled this issue pretty publicly a few years ago...
"...He does not understand ... why the English language allows itself anything so cumbersome and awkward as masculine and feminine pronouns. The Mike Newdow dictionary would replace ''he'' and ''she'' with ''re,'' ''his'' and ''hers'' with ''rees'' and ''him'' and ''her'' with ''erm.''"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E4D91F3EF932A35754C0A9649C8B63
Actually, English already has pronouns intended for gender-neutral situations; they are "he", "his" and "him". The problems started largely with women not recognizing they were included in those terms, even though it has been accepted usage for a thousand years.
I doubt that Newdow's prescriptions will gain much traction. They don't exactly trip off the tongue.