| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Is it time we agreed on a gender-neutral singular pronoun?
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| | | "Is it your brother or your sister who can hold his breath for four minutes?" | Apr 6, 2015 |
George Hopkins wrote:
The first contribution regarding this question is that we have one, namely 'it'.
We have another: "he", which refers to a person or animal of unknown or unspecified sex.
You will find this definition in any comprehensive dictionary of the English language, eg, Collins.
I find it useful, for example when translating from Swedish into English.
"She" on the other hand always refers to a female person or animal.
But perhaps someone has already mentioned it?
Why reinvent the English language?
In an extract from Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style (in which, as I have indeed already mentioned, he adopts on occasion the same strategy that has already been cited of using "she" to refer to both men and women):
"English has no gender-neutral pronoun. At least in grammar, the masculine does not embrace the feminine. Experiments have shown that when people read the word "he" they are likely to assume the writer intended to refer to a male... But the experiments hardly needed to be run, because it's a brute fact of English grammar that "he" is a masculine and not a common-gender pronoun. If you don't believe it, just read these sentences:
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The average American needs the small routines of getting ready for work. As he shaves or pulls on his pantyhose, he is easing himself by small stages into the demands of the day.
She and Louis had a game - who could find the ugliest photgraph of himself.
I support the liberty of every father or mother to educate his children as he desires."
He goes on to point out that both Shakespeare and Jane Austen used the singular "they", and that it can be found in Chaucer, the King James Bible, Swift, Byron, Thackeray, Wharton, Shaw, Auden, and the most recent edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage.
And he concludes: "Every sentence requires a writer to grapple with tradeoffs between clarity, concision, tone, cadence, accuracy, and other values. Why should the value of not excluding women be the only one whose weight is set to zero?"
As I said, if seeing "he" used as a common-gender pronoun doesn't sound wrong to you, you're probably a man.
I am almost English and almost a man, but rather importantly, I am in fact neither.
| | | | Giles Watson 
Italy
Local time: 22:05
Italian to English
In memoriam | As they say... | Apr 6, 2015 |
interpretwhisky wrote:
"English has no gender-neutral pronoun".
Not so.
"They" is a gender-neutral pronoun. It's plural, of course, and the singular equivalents are gender-marked, but Mr Pinker's statement is demonstrably wrong.
There are ways in English to avoid gender-specificity (the plural number, the passive voice, impersonal reformulation etc), where this is a necessity dictated by target-language style expectations but they tend to depend very much on context. There is no one-size-fits-all answer.
On the other hand, I share your concern about avoiding unnecessary gender/age/ethnic/insert-your-favourite-category-related discrimination in translation unless, of course, discrimination is the writer's aim. For example, when an Italian newspaper article describes a person as "un(a) giovane di x anni" I usually translate this as "an x-year-old" and let the context provide any information about gender and seniority, which after all is how English tends to sort these things out.
| | | | Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:05
French to English
+ ...
| Re the "experiments" | Apr 6, 2015 |
interpretwhisky wrote:
But the experiments hardly needed to be run
I'm sure if there's one person that knows about experiments on psychological reaction to language, it's Steven Pinker. What I would disagree with slightly is the idea that, a priori, the experiments "hardly need to be run" on the basis of the example sentences he mentions.
Whether or not a pronoun is perceived as referring to a particular gender "by default" and what gender it is perceived to refer to or clash with "when primed" by other information content in the sentence could be slightly different things. You can't assume that one case determines the other without actually proving this to be the case experimentally. So as far as I can see, despite Pinker's examples, the experiment did need to be run.
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 01:35
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | There is another one - it | Apr 7, 2015 |
Giles Watson wrote: interpretwhisky wrote:
"English has no gender-neutral pronoun".
Not so. "They" is a gender-neutral pronoun. It's plural, of course...
And this one is singular.
For some reason English often uses "it" with child, probably to avoid gender-specificity.
As you say, there are ways in English to avoid gender-specificity. But it is not always easy. It is even more difficult in other languages like Hindi, where gender is not expressed by pronouns (which all are curiously gender-neutral in Hindi) but by the forms other parts of speech take - particularly verbs, but also adjectives, prepositions and adverbs. In such situations, just coining a gender-neutral pronoun would not solve anything. Also in Hindi, every noun is by custom either male or female.
The famous Hindi grammarian, Kishoridas Vajpayei has explained this phenomenon in his magnum opus, Hindi Shabdanushasan. According to him, the grammar genders are different from physical genders, and when languages such as Hindi, or English, use masculine gender as the default gender, they don't actually mean physical masculinity or femininity, but a specific linguistic gender-neural choice, out of two available options. He cites the following sentence to clarify:
Cows are grazing in the field.
Now, there could be a couple of bulls or even male calves in the herd, but the word cows implies these too, but the general idea is that a group of animals of the bovine species are there in the field. The intention here is not to convey information about the gender of the animals but just that these animals are there in the field. In many linguistic constructions, this is the case - even when the male gender is used, the idea is merely to convey gender-neutral information.
I think, this is the right approach to take, and all this hyper-sensitivity to grammatical genders is the result of applying feminist ideas to a different sphere altogether, that of languages, where different rules apply.
[Edited at 2015-04-07 03:49 GMT]
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Giles Watson
Italy
Local time: 22:05
Italian to English
In memoriam
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
And this one is singular.
For some reason English often uses "it" with child, probably to avoid gender-specificity.
Or perhaps because the child in question is simply of unknown (to us) sex but you're quite right. "It" can sometimes be a solution to the "gender quandary".
Other Indo-European languages have neuter nouns for child ("το παιδί" and "das Kind", for example) but it's not quite the same because in Greek and German there is an implicit contrast with the masculine and feminine genders. In English all nouns are grammatically neuter. Many are marked for biological sex ("actress" for a female "actor", for example) but nowadays users of English generally prefer to avoid sex-marked terms unless there is some compelling contextual reason to use them.
Pronouns are a special problem, though. Try calling your best friends' little pride and joy "it" next time you see him/her/them!
| | | | | I don't think it is entirely a feminist issue | Apr 7, 2015 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote: Giles Watson wrote: interpretwhisky wrote:
"English has no gender-neutral pronoun".
Not so. "They" is a gender-neutral pronoun. It's plural, of course... And this one is singular. I think, this is the right approach to take, and all this hyper-sensitivity to grammatical genders is the result of applying feminist ideas to a different sphere altogether, that of languages, where different rules apply. [Edited at 2015-04-07 03:49 GMT]
If I did I wouldn't have commented. (And English is not Hindi, perhaps the issue comes precisely from the fact that, as Giles points out, all nouns are grammatically gender neutral)
Although the issue is perhaps linked to feminism and the changing role of women in society, the debate isn't about feminism, it's about readability.
The role of a translator is to create a natural, easily-read text.
Because companies want their ideas to be transmitted easily. Because readers want to make as little effort as possible to understand these ideas.
Readability is the central theme of Pinker's book. Good writing is writing that can be understood easily.
If "he" causes a hiccup, it's not good writing. That's the debate and in this sense it is a linguistic issue, not a feminist one.
The question is, does it slow down reading (and does it cause misunderstandings)? A discussion of some of the experiments aiming to answer that question can be found here:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=199
[Edited at 2015-04-07 08:43 GMT]
[Edited at 2015-04-07 08:43 GMT]
[Edited at 2015-04-07 09:11 GMT]
| | | | | "Is it your brother or your sister who can hold his breath for four minutes?" | Apr 7, 2015 |
How about, "Is it your brother or your sister who can hold their breath for four minutes?"
| | | | | Sounds ok to me | Apr 7, 2015 |
George Hopkins wrote:
How about, "Is it your brother or your sister who can hold their breath for four minutes?"
If reformulation was not an option this is the construction I would choose.
I reads more naturally to me than:
Is it your brother or your sister that can hold its breath for four minutes?
or
Is it your brother or your sister that can hold his breath for four minutes?
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Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 01:35
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | The issue is language-neutral | Apr 7, 2015 |
interpretwhisky wrote: Balasubramaniam L. wrote: Giles Watson wrote: interpretwhisky wrote:
"English has no gender-neutral pronoun".
Not so. "They" is a gender-neutral pronoun. It's plural, of course... And this one is singular. I think, this is the right approach to take, and all this hyper-sensitivity to grammatical genders is the result of applying feminist ideas to a different sphere altogether, that of languages, where different rules apply. [Edited at 2015-04-07 03:49 GMT] If I did I wouldn't have commented. (And English is not Hindi, perhaps the issue comes precisely from the fact that, as Giles points out, all nouns are grammatically gender neutral) Although the issue is perhaps linked to feminism and the changing role of women in society, the debate isn't about feminism, it's about readability. The role of a translator is to create a natural, easily-read text. Because companies want their ideas to be transmitted easily. Because readers want to make as little effort as possible to understand these ideas. Readability is the central theme of Pinker's book. Good writing is writing that can be understood easily. If "he" causes a hiccup, it's not good writing. That's the debate and in this sense it is a linguistic issue, not a feminist one. The question is, does it slow down reading (and does it cause misunderstandings)? A discussion of some of the experiments aiming to answer that question can be found here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=199[Edited at 2015-04-07 08:43 GMT] [Edited at 2015-04-07 08:43 GMT] [Edited at 2015-04-07 09:11 GMT]
Although the discussion here is centred on English, mainly, but it is present in many languages, including Hindi. Which is why I brought in the Hindi example here.
The confusion is caused when we mix up grammatical gender with human gender - and this mixing up is prompted by the recent wave of feminist ideas where strict parity of genders is insisted upon in every sphere of life, including language.
If we concede that grammatical genders are not exactly the same as human genders, this problem can be easily solved by status quo.
As far as readability is concerned, if in our blind pursuit of human gender equality in languages, we go against accepted customs of languages and their grammar, we would cause real readability problems, in addition to creating semantic confusions, as some of the examples cited in the posts here show. For example, if suddenly you find the plural pronoun "they" when the subject is singular and feminine, that would jar, and gravely disrupt the readability of the text.
It is extremely difficult to change accepted customs and grammar rules, and least of all by coining new words. Coining words is easy, but giving them currency is a near impossibility, unless the coined words get the sanction of custom, and custom doesn't happen over night - it takes time - sometimes centuries.
I will cite another example from Hindi literature to show how difficult it is to change language customs.
One of the leading modern poets of Hindi is Sumitranandan Pant. He writes poetry of the romantic genre, somewhat like Keats or Byron. In Hindi, Moon is used as a metaphor of beauty and it is a male noun. But beauty is often associated with a woman - a beautiful woman's face, is for example, likened to the moon in poetry. This often creates problems because the subject (the woman) is feminine, and its metaphor (Moon) is male.
To avoid this, Sumitranandan Pant started to use moon in the feminine gender in some of his poems. This didn't go very well with critics who severely ridiculed Pant and accused him of mangling Hindi language by not using accepted rules of grammar. Some even accused him of having inadequate command over Hindi, which of course was not the case.
The critics were not mollified when Pant explained his reasons for using Moon in the feminine gender. One critic, Dr. Ramvilas Sharma, himself an accomplished poet and a contemporary of Pant - and hence a bit of professional rivalry is involved here - turned the tables on Pant by asking him how he would like to be referred to in the feminine gender by him, because he found him to be beautiful and feminine! (For those who are unfamiliar with the Hindi literary pantheon, Pant was a strikingly beautiful person with wavy black hair and a slender figure, a bit of a dandy among poets.).
So, the point is, at an individual level, there is little we can do to change how languages function. Languages are much bigger systems than us individuals. We have the licence only to use them, but not the licence to change the way they are coded.
In this, languages are like Trados or MS Office or any other proprietary software we use. We are free to use their functionalities, but we are not allowed to change their internal codes.
In fact, this analogy goes only up to a point - in the case of Trados etc., their owners can change the code, but with languages there are no owners so to speak and so there is no one authorized to change them. Change can happen only in a natural, incremental way, which can take decades and centuries.
[Edited at 2015-04-07 14:14 GMT]
| | | | | I'm still not sure it has all that much to do with feminism | Apr 7, 2015 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
The confusion is caused when we mix up grammatical gender with human gender - and this mixing up is prompted by the recent wave of feminist ideas where strict parity of genders is insisted upon in every sphere of life, including language.
If we concede that grammatical genders are not exactly the same as human genders, this problem can be easily solved by status quo.
As far as readability is concerned, if in our blind pursuit of human gender equality in languages, we go against accepted customs of languages and their grammar, we would cause real readability problems, in addition to creating semantic confusions, as some of the examples cited in the posts here show. For example, if suddenly you find the plural pronoun "they" when the subject is singular and feminine, that would jar, and gravely disrupt the readability of the text.
[Edited at 2015-04-07 14:14 GMT]
In fact, it is the objection to singular "they" that is new, not the use of it.
I'm not saying it's conclusive, but I've at least cited studies that have found that "he" does in fact jar more than "they".
I also suspect that the move away from "he" is spurred on less by the feminist movement, but more by the fact that texts are now more frequently aimed at women as well as men and written about the contribution of women as well as of men. Perhaps the feminist movement contributed to that, but in 2015, isn't this more a fact of life than a feminist idea?
It's not about conceding that grammatical genders are exactly the same as human genders - it is the question: in English, do grammatical genders reflect human genders exactly? There is evidence (and opinions expressed here) that say that they do. There is also evidence that argues the opposite.
I can concede that being asked several times a day whether I'm married or not (miss/mrs/mademoiselle/madame) perhaps annoys me for "feminist" reasons, but I find it more difficult to agree that being referred to as "him" annoys me because of that. I mentioned the Scottish issue because it seems to be a similar issue. Often when I correct people and tell them I'm Scottish not English, their response is "oh yes, because the Scots don't like the English, do they?" but in reality it's nothing to do with that. I'm Scottish, not English, my name is Georgie, not Jean, and I'm a woman, not a man. That's all. Obviously for some people "he" can refer to a woman too, and to a certain extent that's fine, but for me it doesn't and I really don't think that has anything to do with whether I believe in parity or not. If anything, maybe it's just because I was born in 1985.
| | | | | Not to dismiss Hindi | Apr 7, 2015 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote: interpretwhisky wrote: Balasubramaniam L. wrote: Giles Watson wrote: interpretwhisky wrote:
"English has no gender-neutral pronoun".
Not so. "They" is a gender-neutral pronoun. It's plural, of course... And this one is singular. I think, this is the right approach to take, and all this hyper-sensitivity to grammatical genders is the result of applying feminist ideas to a different sphere altogether, that of languages, where different rules apply. [Edited at 2015-04-07 03:49 GMT] If I did I wouldn't have commented. (And English is not Hindi, perhaps the issue comes precisely from the fact that, as Giles points out, all nouns are grammatically gender neutral) Although the issue is perhaps linked to feminism and the changing role of women in society, the debate isn't about feminism, it's about readability. The role of a translator is to create a natural, easily-read text. Because companies want their ideas to be transmitted easily. Because readers want to make as little effort as possible to understand these ideas. Readability is the central theme of Pinker's book. Good writing is writing that can be understood easily. If "he" causes a hiccup, it's not good writing. That's the debate and in this sense it is a linguistic issue, not a feminist one. The question is, does it slow down reading (and does it cause misunderstandings)? A discussion of some of the experiments aiming to answer that question can be found here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=199[Edited at 2015-04-07 08:43 GMT] [Edited at 2015-04-07 08:43 GMT] [Edited at 2015-04-07 09:11 GMT] Although the discussion here is centred on English, mainly, but it is present in many languages, including Hindi. Which is why I brought in the Hindi example here. The confusion is caused when we mix up grammatical gender with human gender - and this mixing up is prompted by the recent wave of feminist ideas where strict parity of genders is insisted upon in every sphere of life, including language. If we concede that grammatical genders are not exactly the same as human genders, this problem can be easily solved by status quo. As far as readability is concerned, if in our blind pursuit of human gender equality in languages, we go against accepted customs of languages and their grammar, we would cause real readability problems, in addition to creating semantic confusions, as some of the examples cited in the posts here show. For example, if suddenly you find the plural pronoun "they" when the subject is singular and feminine, that would jar, and gravely disrupt the readability of the text. It is extremely difficult to change accepted customs and grammar rules, and least of all by coining new words. Coining words is easy, but giving them currency is a near impossibility, unless the coined words get the sanction of custom, and custom doesn't happen over night - it takes time - sometimes centuries. I will cite another example from Hindi literature to show how difficult it is to change language customs. One of the leading modern poets of Hindi is Sumitranandan Pant. He writes poetry of the romantic genre, somewhat like Keats or Byron. In Hindi, Moon is used as a metaphor of beauty and it is a male noun. But beauty is often associated with a woman - a beautiful woman's face, is for example, likened to the moon in poetry. This often creates problems because the subject (the woman) is feminine, and its metaphor (Moon) is male. To avoid this, Sumitranandan Pant started to use moon in the feminine gender in some of his poems. This didn't go very well with critics who severely ridiculed Pant and accused him of mangling Hindi language by not using accepted rules of grammar. Some even accused him of having inadequate command over Hindi, which of course was not the case. The critics were not mollified when Pant explained his reasons for using Moon in the feminine gender. One critic, Dr. Ramvilas Sharma, himself an accomplished poet and a contemporary of Pant - and hence a bit of professional rivalry is involved here - turned the tables on Pant by asking him how he would like to be referred to in the feminine gender by him, because he found him to be beautiful and feminine! (For those who are unfamiliar with the Hindi literary pantheon, Pant was a strikingly beautiful person with wavy black hair and a slender figure, a bit of a dandy among poets.). So, the point is, at an individual level, there is little we can do to change how languages function. Languages are much bigger systems than us individuals. We have the licence only to use them, but not the licence to change the way they are coded. In this, languages are like Trados or MS Office or any other proprietary software we use. We are free to use their functionalities, but we are not allowed to change their internal codes. In fact, this analogy goes only up to a point - in the case of Trados etc., their owners can change the code, but with languages there are no owners so to speak and so there is no one authorized to change them. Change can happen only in a natural, incremental way, which can take decades and centuries. [Edited at 2015-04-07 14:14 GMT]
I just don't speak Hindi so I can't comment on the issues in that language. "Il" and "ils" doesn't jar for me in French, perhaps because it is a second language, but also perhaps because inanimate objects have genders in French, whereas in English they don't. Apart from ships - and when ships are referred to as "she" does it not conjure up a certain feminine image?
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 01:35
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Yes it does (just being provocative!) | Apr 8, 2015 |
interpretwhisky wrote:
I just don't speak Hindi so I can't comment on the issues in that language. "Il" and "ils" doesn't jar for me in French, perhaps because it is a second language, but also perhaps because inanimate objects have genders in French, whereas in English they don't. Apart from ships - and when ships are referred to as "she" does it not conjure up a certain feminine image?
A ship is a "she" because, it is secondary to the captain (who is a male) and who controls the ship in the same way as by 19th century social norms, a man controls his woma (e)n!
In modern times, it is quite possible to have a female captain (captainess?) of a ship and perhaps it would then be odd to refer to the ship as a "she", but may be not, for gender norms have undergone a sea change (pun not intended) and it is considered quite normal to have a family of two women, with one taking a dominant role!
Anyway, it would be quite pointless to foist all this on language rules. Language genders are not the same as societal genders.
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| Missing the point? | Apr 8, 2015 |
But a female captain in English is a "captain", just like a "prime minister", etc.: The term is simply gender-neutral. Almost no languages seem to work like that (Germanic, romance, presumably Slavic languages and apparently also Hindi).
While some gender-neutral forms in English are confusing or disconcerting for certain readers (e.g., in my case, the Guardian's recommendation to use "actor" for women as well as men), these cases form the exception and also a group that is becoming small... See more But a female captain in English is a "captain", just like a "prime minister", etc.: The term is simply gender-neutral. Almost no languages seem to work like that (Germanic, romance, presumably Slavic languages and apparently also Hindi).
While some gender-neutral forms in English are confusing or disconcerting for certain readers (e.g., in my case, the Guardian's recommendation to use "actor" for women as well as men), these cases form the exception and also a group that is becoming smaller and smaller ("police officers", "flight attendants", etc.)
And in English, it does not make much sense to distinguish between grammatical and real gender, because the English language does not make this distinction. Things with sex organs are "he" or "she" and things without them are "it". (With rare exceptions, such as 90-year-old sailors who refer to their boat as "she" or nameless animals whose gender does not interest the speaker and who become "it",) If I read "he" in English, it means "male" to me and to most readers under (probably around) 60.
At any rate, in most contexts, it is wrong (a false friend) to use "he" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun in English: If that is unclear to you, then you need to expose yourself to more English-language media as well as academic writing, etc. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 01:35
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | That seems to be a major deficiency of the English language | Apr 8, 2015 |
Michael Wetzel wrote:
At any rate, in most contexts, it is wrong (a false friend) to use "he" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun in English
In Hindi, the issue is entirely different. Here, gender is indicated not by pronouns (which are all gender-neutral), but through forms that other parts of speech (verbs, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, etc.) take. All these have two forms, the masculine form and the feminine form. The norm is, if the gender of the subject is unknown, then all these parts of speech default to the masculine gender.
This is why it is a near impossibility to get gender-neutral writing in Hindi. With English, the problem seems to be a lot milder, but intractable nevertheless.
Since in English, gender information is communicated by pronouns, and there is no singular gender-neutral pronoun, a vast area of expressions becomes ambiguous as there is no way to naturally communicate singular, gender-neutral expressions in English. The available work-arounds are inelegant and are not universally applicable.
I wonder, how a language that is used so extensively developed such a major lacuna. Is it because such a need was not felt in earlier times? What new developments have taken place recently that this issue has suddenly become so evident in the English language?
[Edited at 2015-04-08 14:07 GMT]
| | | | Giles Watson
Italy
Local time: 22:05
Italian to English
In memoriam | Developing as we speak | Apr 8, 2015 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
I wonder, how a language that is used so extensively developed such a major lacuna. Is it because such a need was not felt in earlier times? What new developments have taken place recently that this issue has suddenly become so evident in the English language?
The more languages are used, the more they develop, which is why English has changed faster than most other languages over the past few hundred years.
The need for a sex-neutral singular English pronoun is a fairly recent phenomenon and one that has become widely perceived in the course of my own lifetime as part of a shift towards non-discriminatory default assumptions in public discourse. This has been reflected in the rhetoric of public language, of course, but while it is easy to substitute one noun or verb with a synonym that is perceived as being less discriminatory, pronouns require a little more time to establish themselves. The current leading sex-neutral candidates "it" and "they" have drawbacks when applied to individuals - "it" implies inanimateness; "they" has a lingering aftertaste of plurality - and while an entirely new non-sex-specific singular neuter pronoun might be desirable, there aren't really any serious contenders.
I quite like "he or she or it", though, particularly if it is abbreviated to "h'orsh'it" 
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