In today’s blog, John Wells quotes a long piece by Eric Armstrong, a voice, speech and dialect coach. I have no complaint with any of the content of what he says, but towards the end, the pronoun he invariably uses for “actor” is “she”, “her”: “But silliness has great value to an actor! It frees her up, lets her connect to those new sounds in a joyous, unfettered manner, stripping away all those value judgments of sounds (and ultimately symbols) as being “mere math”. And once she can hear those sounds in her own mouth, to feel the physical action required, the visualize the action of her articulators, she is ready to begin to learn how to write them down systematically with IPA.”
Am I the only person who finds this pandering to the extremist feminist lobby offensive? The English language has no neutral pronoun for the third person singular, either as subject or object, but to use “she” and “her” in this way brings me up short every time. I am given the impression that it is only Eric’s female students who value silliness. Earlier in his piece, Eric has avoided the problem by keeping to the plural form. Why could he not continue? This is an increasing tendency among American writers. I do not believe it does anything to enhance the feminist cause, and simply annoys large numbers of otherwise peaceable citizens.
To quote John Wells from yesterday: “End of rant”.
January 29, 2008 at 10:25 am
The one case I’ve come across where the routine use of “she” seemed quite justified was in a book on babycare by Penelope Leach. She used “he” & “she” in alternate chapters to refer to the baby.
February 5, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Yes, I think you are being sexist. Why should the linguistic acknowledgment of the existence of half of the human race be branded as “pandering to the extremist feminist lobby”? And so what if encountering the occasional unexpected “she” or “her” brings you up short from time to time? Isn’t that one of the greatest powers of language, to unsettle our image of the world shaped as it is through the words we use and expect? Think of it, rather, as a reminder of how exclusive language that panders to the expectations of old-fogey traditionalists can be for the rest of us.
The comment above suggesting that a childcare book is the only book in which this practice might be justified bewilders me. The suggestion that looking after children is the only human activity in which women’s involvement merits (50%) linguistic acknowledgment is quite simply ignorant and insulting.
February 6, 2008 at 3:11 am
I was thinking about the Smurfs earlier today. See, the Smurfs are a community of archetypes: each represents a character trait in purified form. There’s the responsible Smurf (Papa); the over-reacter (Weepy); the nerd (Brainy); the girl (Smurfette), and so on.
The same pattern shows up in lots of cartoons, and a similar pattern is common in children’s literature: the main characters are a trio– there’s the hero, who’s handsome and brave and who the reader is expected to identify with; his friend, who’s fat or smart or gay or otherwise less cool; and his other friend, who’s a girl.
Over and over, we see “female” as “character actor”. Normal people, of course, are male.
What?
Now, I’m not normally one to get excited about gendered pronouns (well, I *do* get pretty excited about pronominal gender, but generally only in morphosyntactic contexts, not sociological ones), but I would definitely argue that there’s a cultural bias here to see Everyman as a man, and the woman as a marked variant; and that that bias has something to do with reading use of the feminine pronoun as a default as “pandering to the extremist feminist lobby”.
February 6, 2008 at 9:23 pm
I thought I was the only one … now I see that I am *almost* the only one. The current trend when referring to a hypothetical person (have you ever met a hypothetical person? what does he/she/it look like?) is purportedly to alternate between male and female pronouns, but it seems that far more often than not, people simply fall back on the feminine for fear of offending the hordes of angry feminists who will read sexism into everything. I am a woman myself, and I find it distracting. Although I must say it’s not as bad as “s/he”, which leaves one to puzzle over the intended pronunciation. Or am I the only one who pronounces words in her head as she reads?
February 8, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I suppose I ought to respond to Lesley’s bewilderment about the Leach book. My point had nothing to do with women’s involvement in childcare — I don’t think Penny Leach was implying that fathers wouldn’t be involved, though Lesley seems to draw that inference. It was simply an example where the exclusive use of either “he” or “she” to refer to the baby throughout the book would have been ridiculous. As far as I can remember, Leach discusses this point in her Introduction.
February 9, 2008 at 6:18 pm
“The English language has no neutral pronoun for the third person singular, either as subject or object”
With all due respect (and a lot is due — I really enjoy the blog) this is clearly untrue, at least in the American that I speak and as long as you allow in American as part of the English language :^)
The everyday answer to third person singular pronouns is “they” and “them” of course. If you can indulge me a whole paragraph, I promise the only people who would raise an eyebrow at the reworked quote below would be a ragtag collection of math professors, English teaching adjuncts, disgruntled newspaper editors, and, perhaps, your mom. In fact, I’d wager a public apology if I’m wrong that most people would find the use of he/him to be MORE odd than they/them — although granted not as odd as she/her.
“But silliness has great value to an actor! It frees them up, lets them connect to those new sounds in a joyous, unfettered manner, stripping away all those value judgments of sounds (and ultimately symbols) as being “mere math”. And once they can hear those sounds in their own mouth, to feel the physical action required, the visualize the action of their articulators, they are ready to begin to learn how to write them down systematically with IPA.”
I’m all in favor of using he/him or she/her as third person pronouns for dramatic effect. The former seems to sound vaguely retro and academic. The latter, as heard in the original post, provokes a mental double-take. But to say that English lacks a sex-neutral third person singular is to ignore an overwhelmingly widespread linguistic fact.
February 11, 2008 at 2:47 pm
You’re certainly not the only one. I, as a woman (though not a native speaker of English), find it ridiculous and am truly astounded that people would want to butcher a language for such a reason when that actually changes nothing. I cannot – and do not – believe this encourages equal treatment of men and women in any way.
I find it to be really strange that some women feel offended about a petty thing like this. It seems clear that it is not a real problem; people should be concentrating on real cases of mistreatment or inequality – not a simple tradition.
February 11, 2008 at 3:19 pm
True; the plural, being gender-neutral, is a handy alternative for the 3rd person singular in colloquial speech when one wishes to avoid being forced to choose between genders. On paper, however, it can sometimes look awkward. Just a few minutes ago, in an online news story, I came across the makeshift reflexive pronoun “themself”. Now I am too much of a descriptivist to resort to arguing that “it doesn’t exist,” but this one is entirely too self-conscious for a pronoun. In writing, I usually opt for “one” whenever possible. Conveniently vague, yet underused.
February 12, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I agree that, while singular “they” has been standard for at least as long as “they” has been a word in the English language, “themself” is for now not yet a standard form. Increased use of “one” is a wonderful method as well.
January 20, 2009 at 5:46 pm
It seems like a severe case of false agreement to me : actors are clearly “he”, actresses are equally clearly “she”. Oh, and babies are “it”.
May 14, 2009 at 12:48 am
I agree with Mr. TAYLOR here. We don’t need to talk of poetesses, aviatrices, or (shudder) Negresses. But what actors do is not interchangeable with what actresses do, pace the Divine Sarah.
August 7, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Addendum: there is plenty of evidence to show that people use “they” to refer to an indefinite singular referent even when the sex of the referent is known.