Re: Another stupid singular "their"

trio@xxxxxxxxxx (Donna Richoux) wrote:

The Grammer Genious <waupecong@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Robert Lieblich" <r_s_lieblich@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
<...>
Singular they is the least of evils when there's no way to use a
pronoun of either gender. But where only one gender is involved,
there's no reason to resort to it. <...>

Sure there is: English usage through history.

The cited use of singular they is a good example of the historical
use, which has nothing at all to do with the sex of the person
referred to. Rather, it is employed when the person referred to is a
hypothetical any-person rather than a specific individual. It
commonly occurs with "every" (as in this case), "any," "some," "no,"
etc. In facts, examples such as the one cited constitute the
*evidence* that sex/gender is not involved.

About every two or three months, someone posts an example of the use
of singular they when the sex of the referrent is obvious, exclaiming
that the writer used it "when he didn't even have to!"

And the depth of the dismay and rancor expressed in those recurring
discussions is surprisingly strong. I don't get it. People who say
that "Every person washed their hands" is now okay and inevitable, get
really bitter about "Every woman washed their hands." They've come to
accept "their" standing for "his or her," but the sky is falling if
it's all "her" and no "his." Myself, I think it's inevitable.

You don't have to look hard for examples of the usage in question.

No, and you don't have to look hard for people who write "If I loose my
job, I won't have an income". Shall we say that because more and more
people don't know the difference between "loose" and "lose" that, soon
enough, everyone will be saying it and writing it? More and more peoople
write "would of" and there's no problem finding that evidence of
linguistic ignorance either.

Popularity is not sufficient evidence of superiority in all respects.
McDonald's and AOL are cases in point, but I stay away from the Supersize
Me case, because it's been done to death. I think, however, it's fair to
say that most native speakers of English are as sophisticated about
language as AOL subscribers are about computers and the Internet. Why
don't we all just accept that AOL is the best ISP? After all, millions of
other Americans and even non-Americans do. That's the thrust of your
argument.

On the other hand, it's impossible to cause the vast majority of native
and non-native speakers to speak and write reasonably standard English
(or any other language, for that matter). That's a given, and attempting
to turn all the sows' ears out there into silk purses is just plain
stupid.

It is also impossible for clerics of any kind to cause the vast majority
of humanity to become the ideal persons that their religions demand every
member be, yet these very prescriptive clerics are not only not condemned
for their vain and futile waste of personal and communal resources, for
lying to their flocks about being the only true religion (that's just
logic: they can't all be the only true religion unless they qualify the
statement with "of its kind", and then, because everything is unique at
some discernable level, the truth of that assertion is a mere tautology),
and for a host of other offenses against nature and humanity, they are
actually admired and encouraged for their devout faith in things that are
not there and for their pointless prayers for things that cannot happen.

We must all, I suppose, be like Candide, who, "having been educated never
to judge for himself," was able to accept that "all is for the best in
this, the best of all possible worlds".

But there is no shame in making judgments about the quality of usages. We
all do it all the time. Some draw the line at ungrammaticality, others at
non-idiomaticity, still others at infrequency of use. Those of us who
choose to draw the line elsewhere are not unaware of how ready some are
ready to accept stupidity and cacaphony as normal and even good usage.
But that is of no moment. We just like to bitch about things we know we
can change when we use language, but we don't really care whether anyone
else changes the way they use language. It's all a matter of taste above
the substratum of the grammar one learned at one's mother's knee.

The first page of hits for "every woman * their" had:

Every woman raised their hand and not a single man.

A wonderful sentence. One to be emulated by all intelligent speakers and
writers of English. One to put up on the wall right next to that little
prayer about helping me change the things I can, accept the things I
can't, and gaining the wisdom to know the difference.

But I guess that every woman has their way of doing things

I wonder who "they" might be. I always thought that every woman had her
own way of doing things, but now I have to swallow that every woman is
doing things in "their" way. Who are "they" and where did they get their
power over women from?

given the fact that every woman has their own medical history

I know that every woman has their own scent,

Every woman should have their own little black dress

At least these writers threw in "own" along with "their".

I don't think these are sentences that cause anyone to run screaming
from the room.

No, but they do induce spitting at the speaker's shoes and on the
writer's page. Stupidity is still stupidity, even when millions accept it
as the new normalcy.

I doubt we would even notice the construction if we weren't looking.

Right, Donna, we wouldn't notice if we weren't looking, because then we
wouldn't be reading it, and we wouldn't notice it if we weren't
listening, because then we wouldn't be hearing it. And then, of course,
it wouldn't offend us.

--
Franke: EFL teacher and medical editor
Unmunged email: /at/hush.ai
Native speaker of American English, posting from Taiwan
It's all in the way you say it, innit?
.

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