It’s bad enough that McWhorter has a point when it comes to the way language develops going forward.
It’s a principle in linguistics that things that settle in for good tend to start with young people, and the new “they” is used most by people under 35. (It has a mixed reception among people between 35 and 55 and is often outright dismissed by people past 55, according to a 2019 survey.)
Groovy. Of course, I fall into the outright dismissal cohort, but that puts me at a disadvantage. I am a dinosaur and have no say as to how words and grammar will change over the next 47 seconds. That said, I reject Columbia linguistics prof John McWhorter’s foundational assumption that the singular “they” is here to stay, thus giving rise to the need to further bastardize the language to compensate for the damage it imposes on clarity. You remember clarity, the point of language as mechanism of communication?
Why, you ask, would McWhorter take it as a given that the singular “they” is not only sufficiently accepted but virtuous, having been rammed down woke throats by “gender non-conforming” activists?
Poor little “they” has had it rough over the years. For ages, we have been taught that it is an error to use “they” in the singular — “A person can’t help their birth” — because there is supposedly something inherently and ineradicably plural about “they.” Never mind that even Chaucer used “they” in the singular and that the example sentence I just used is from Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair.”
Chaucer died in 1400. Even with the bolstering of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), two writers over the past 600+ years does not make an overwhelming argument. What it means is thousands of writers of equal or greater repute rejected this use, and these are two outliers, if not writers in desperate need of better editors. But wait, there’s more!
Thankfully, this pox on singular “they” has started to ease up over the past 20 years or so. The Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster have declared it acceptable, and in 2015, the Washington Post copy editor Bill Walsh asked, “Allowing ‘they’ for a gender-nonconforming person is a no-brainer. And once we’ve done that, why not allow it for the most awkward of those ‘he or she’ situations?”
Dictionaries, like linguistics profs, love to be on the cutting edge of new words and usages, or else there is no reason to buy the new dictionary. As for Bill Walsh, he should have focused his attention on his football team, which had its own word issues. And yet, there is still more!
As peculiar as many find the new “they,” it is hardly unknown among the world’s languages to use the same pronoun for “he,” “she” and “they.” In Berik, a language of Papua New Guinea, there is a pronoun for “I,” a pronoun for “we” and one pronoun for both singular and plural “you” — just as in English — and one pronoun for “he,” “she” and “they.” The new “they” actually brings English quite close to being like Berik, which some might think is kind of cool.
Who among us doesn’t wake up every morning and ask, what would I say today if I spoke Berik? And yet, upon this foundation, McWhorter concludes that the deed is done.
Regardless, I suspect that the new “they” is with us to stay and not just because it was chosen as a word of the year by the American Dialect Society in 2015.
But what about clarity, us olds ask?
My proposal to treat “they” as a singular subject when conjugating the verb would be similarly handy and just plain right. I also think that it would be easy to master because using “s” at the end of the verb when referring to individuals is so deeply ingrained in the Anglophone mind.
In other words, when “they” refers to the plural, we would say “they want.” But when “they” refers to the singular, whether gender non-conforming at any given moment or grandma, who is well aware of her gender and always has been, we would say “they wants,” much like “he wants” or “she wants,” except with “they” since it’s unhip to use he or she pronouns.
“They wants” may feel a little odd at first or like one is doing some kind of imitation. But we can assume that “you was” felt somewhat nonstandard at first, and people got used to it. I especially like that using “s” with the new “they” would keep it from being a grammatical irregularity in terms of verbal marking.
Except the use of “you was,” a one-off example from John Adams in 1800, never felt nonstandard to the rest of Americans since they never used it. And still don’t. And have neither need nor want to use it, unless they happen to be a linguistics prof at Columbia.
But McWhorter, a man capable of great clarity except when it comes to his chosen academic discipline, argues that given that the plural “they” will be the normal usage in order to show respect to the array of “gender non-conforming,” whose very existence would be erased if the rest of us failed to use the words they demand, his modest proposal closes the gap of how the singular “they” should work with non-conforming verbs so we have some clue what the hell people are saying.
In other words, the new “they” would be both progressive and tidy. My case rests.
Well then, has the jury reached a verdict?
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Wait till an airplane crashes, or a nuclear powerplant melts down because someone uses non-standard language and there is a misunderstanding about what is being communicated.
They wants to confuse we and its working.
[Insert Pogo quoted here.]
I never really buy “clarity” arguments. Plenty of language is intrinsically unclear- just in the pronoun space alone, we have “you” referring to a single person or a group- and we get it through context, because language is a tool of sentient, thinking individuals who don’t have to be literally told everything and pick up contextual clues.
Language is one of our few truly democratic institutions. It literally does not matter how many elites and English professors say that a usage is “incorrect”; if the public takes to it, they can overrule all the ruling classes and force the change. It has happened thousands of times. It’s why we no longer say “thou”, and why we do say “less” to mean “lower in number” and use “flout” and “flaunt” as synonyms. I think this is one of the most wonderful things about language– why would we ever want one more cultural institution dominated by elites? We have too many of those already.
But beyond that, it just has to be that way. You can look to France and see what happens when a central authority tries to impose “logical” rules on language– the public just completely ignores it and the authorities have to accept the public’s judgment.
And so it is here. Obviously the trendiness around “they” has to do with LGBT issues, but long before the public cared about LGBT issues, the singular “they” solved a real problem inherent in the “logical”, “clear” language that elites wanted– that you were forced to either use a clumsy “he or she” construction or be a sexist and use “he” every time you wanted to use a referent to an unidentified person earlier mention in a sentence. Use “they” and the problem goes away.
The public, as they so often are in a democracy, is right.
So McWhorter is the voice of the people speaking out against those domineering “elites” who seek to force the archaic singular usage of “they” down our throats?
If the people do not endorse usage of “they” as a singular, it won’t take hold.
Well that was a pointless yet unpersuasive word salad. Much as I hate to be trite, I think it’s called for here:
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
Exactly correct. Language is one of the most democratic things in the world. It’s one area where elites, however one defines them, can’t really force things on us unwilling plebes. If people hadn’t chosen to endorse “Ms.” it wouldn’t have survived. Same with “they” in this context. It either will become standard or it won’t. If it does, people will understand what it means. If enough people find it confusing, it won’t become standard. And as with “Ms.” it’s possible that the lack of clarity will come to be seen as a feature, not a bug. Us olds rarely like this kind of change, but it’s not really up to us in the long term.
The comparison with Ms. doesn’t hold up. There was a reason why “Ms.” was needed, to remove the archaic stigma distinguishing married from unmarried women in the workforce,” and there was no downside to it other than resistance to change.
While it’s a truism that whatever “the people” adopt becomes the norm, you’re conflating two separate issues. Many people misuse words, whether because of a lack of education, culture or laziness. Dilan Esper’s “flout and flaunt” is an example. Notice how “literally” has become the new “figuratively”? It’s not a product of deliberation, but people who can’t be bothered using the word that means what they are trying to say. Some, like you, will make excuses and shrug it off. Most will think they’re dumb or poorly educated.
But when it comes to pronouns, it’s purely a matter of virtue signalling. Sadly and pathetically, children are subject to peer pressure to avoid being scorned for not adopting whatever is cool at the moment. Adult enablers (that would be you) make it worse. The problem is there is no serious utility to the change and it has a significant downside.
That young people may feel compelled to accept it lest their friends call them mean names doesn’t make it a good idea or reflect a natural evolution to language. It’s just children being children with a handful of grownup telling them to try jumping off the roof to see if they can fly because, well, you never know.
Many people misuse words, whether because of a lack of education, culture or laziness. Dilan Esper’s “flout and flaunt” is an example. Notice how “literally” has become the new “figuratively”? It’s not a product of deliberation, but people who can’t be bothered using the word that means what they are trying to say.
This assumes the conclusion. I think most people use flout and flaunt interchangeably because it is common to do so, and it is common to do so because it is correct English (as reflected in basically every major dictionary) to do so, and they learned this as correct English. It has nothing to do with laziness or lack of education. There is literally (see what I did there?) no basis for assuming total strangers or acquaintances of yours whose lives you do not intimately know are lazy, and one certainly cannot generalize about the education level of any particular person who uses “flaunt” and “flout” interchangeably.
Let me, humbly, suggest an alternate story of what is going on. I think some people are taught a bunch of “rules” that are not actually rules. Sometimes parents teach them, sometimes English teachers, sometimes bosses early in one’s career. This happens for a number of reasons, including (1) some people are seriously misinformed about what is actually correct English, having learned such nonexistent “rules” from authority figures themselves, (2) some people think using language in a particularly stuffy and rigid way connotes social status, and (3) some people dislike the notion of contextual clues and wish language were more “logical” than it is and want to push it in that direction.
But the key point is that the ideosyncratic view of one authority figure in one’s life is not the same as “correct English”, and it doesn’t mean that everyone who uses the language differently is lazy and uneducated. It just means that perhaps those people’s authority figures taught them something different (consistent with what the dictionary said), or they read articles or books that used the terms in the way that you think to be incorrect, or their boss followed the dictionary and didn’t recognize the distinction you recognized, or they looked it up themselves and discovered that either usage was correct English.
And importantly, note how the argument shifts. It starts out as “we just want clarity”, but it quickly turns into “these lazy uneducated slothful folks don’t know the rules and don’t care to look them up (even though if they looked in the dictionary, they would actually find they are violating no rules)”. Which brings me back to my point about elites versus the masses. There’s a notion of superiority in the claim that “flout” and “flaunt” must not mean the same thing– that *I* take the time and invest the study in “speaking and writing correctly” and thus stand above those lesser folks who are too lazy and uneducated to do so.
And that’s why I am, ultimately, right that this is a rearguard action by elites who dislike the idea that language is a democratic institution controlled by the masses, people who are seen as too lazy and uneducated to have control of such an important institution. That’s always the argument against democracy, isn’t it?
From the Oxford English Dictionary:
flout /flout/ verb
openly disregard (a rule, law or convention).
Flaunt /flônt,flänt/ verb
display (something) ostentatiously, especially in order to provoke envy or admiration or to show defiance.
Without definitions, words are meaningless squiggles.
Interesting you have to go to England to find that.
Because the standard in AMERICAN English is Webster’s, not the OED, and it says:
“Although the “treat contemptuously” sense of flaunt undoubtedly arose from confusion with flout, the contexts in which it appears cannot be called substandard.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flout
The ever-trendy MW allowing for a secondary definition based on the misuse of the word by the illiterate is not a very strong argument, Dilan. Most of us don’t aspire to sink to the lowest common denominator.
MW is just describing what *is* (which is arguably fine to do). That can’t really be take as statement of what it *should be* (we have no indication of MW’s position on that).
In any case, it appears fairly obvious that conflating “flaunt” with “flout” isn’t an improvement in clarity. Especially, when “flaunt” already exists for what it means.
Same as “Latinx” failed because the target group rejected it.
My example: “and” as a verb replacing “to”.
“try to run” becomes “try and run”
Not verb, preposition and conjunction ( I hope )
Except…this is a change foisted by a tiny minority on an unwilling majority of standard language speakers, authors, professionals, and academics. This is not bottom up or even top down in the ordinary sense. Understand McWhorter’s argument. He’s just far more wrong than right.
The jury has reached a verdict, and it’s “No, we’re not doing any of this “they” nonsense.”
I don’t give a damn if someone wants to invent a new singular pronoun for non-binary people. Maybe “Sherm” or “Herm”. But I’m not doing “They.”
I’m fond of “it” for that circumstance.
Singular “they” grates on my ears and often confuses – especially because, despite what McWhorter wisely believes should happen, it’s commonly (always?) used with plural rather than singular word forms.
That much said, I think he’s probably right that it’s here to stay. Language evolves, like it or not.
(And while he may only reference Chaucer and Thackeray, the singular “they” is remarkably common in the literature we have from really before the 19th Century. Not to the exclusion of “he” and “she” but alongside them.
Now, and going full orthoganal for a moment, that most vapid of teen-age-adored thinkers (at least when I was a teen), Khalil Gibran offered in The Prophet the incredibly stupid and downright false statement that “We shall never understand one another until the language is reduced to seven words.” Alas, he didn’t bother to say which seven.
Past usage was not quite the same as known individuals dictating their personal pronouns to others. From the AP Style Guide:
In other words, when there was no better word and no loss of clarity, it was proper and common to use.
Teed that one up for you, didn’t I.
For which I thank you.
My kids’ school policies have been changed to use “they” in place of he/she and even to try to avoid the use of pronouns altogether, no matter how awkward the language which results, and no matter that it’s a small K-8 district with no one identifying as a “they.” We’re told that this must be done in case theoretically someone is someday offended. And yes we’ve been lectured that the online Websters changed the 500-year-old grammar rules 5 minutes ago, so it’s okay. And if you point out the absurdity of this, you are branded as the one causing trouble. Why are you making such a big deal about this?; why are you obsessed with pronouns? they ask.
“As for Bill Walsh, he should have focused his attention on his football team, which had its own word issues.”
Having immediately gone there myself, this made my day.