Spoken and Written Language

Singular they and he or she were put out to pasture by grammarians. But even an Act of Parliament in 1850 England, which banned official use of the expression he or she in favor of generic he, didn't affect the spoken language (Bodine 173). Literature is never written in the spoken language, and rules of writing are always guided by prescription. Ong notes, "Without writing, words as such have no visual presence.... They have no focus and no trace ... not even a trajectory" (574). So, we're likely to be far more relaxed in speech than in writing. For example, the writing systems of the various Chinese and Arabic idioms don't reflect the speech of their readers. There was a time when there was no formal written Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, or French; documents were written in Latin, the language of their origin. In fact, literature has often been the definitive element that divides dialect from language. The Tuscan dialect became the national language of Italy simply because it was the first dialect of the Italian peninsula to boast a body of literature — and its greatest writer is now known as the Father of the Italian language, Dante Alighieri.

In most languages where writing exists, there's a distinct code of behavior for written language, especially in academic and formal texts. And most people find it difficult, if not impossible, to defy the code. Even a dancing-along-the-warpath anti-prescriptivist such as Pinker follows the very rules he so deplores. In a chapter entitled "The Language Mavens," he uses the expression "his or her speech" (383) as he lambastes prescriptivists for rejecting a perfectly good term such as singular they. "Indeed, they has the advantage of embracing both sexes and feeling right in a wider variety of sentences" (392). If he really eschewed the dictates of prescriptivism, he would have remembered to use singular they before launching his offensive.

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How We Say We Talk

To find out what people say about their own use of singular they in conversation, I asked thirty-five people to fill in the blanks of fourteen sentences that called for a third-person singular pronoun. Thirty people responded — twenty-five teachers, three writers, one copyeditor, and one secretary. Though asking people to write down what they think they say might seem contradictory, I was really interested in how they responded to the following statement:

Everyone saw me before I saw _____. (Choose a third-person pronoun.)

In one of Pinker's invectives, he predicts the average prescriptivist — or, to use his terminology, "Mr. Smartypants" — will "squirm" when asked to finish this sentence (391). On the contrary, even respondents who had gone out of their way to present themselves as grammatically aware had no problem filling in the blank with them:

Another telling aspect of the questionnaire was the participants' willingness to use the seemingly impossible singular reflexive, themself. Twenty-two respondents used this construction to complete the following sentence:

It's annoying when someone constantly pats ________ on the back. (Choose a third-person reflexive pronoun.)

Their response indicates that, at least in spoken language, singular they is the epicene pronoun of choice since it functions equally well as for both single and plural referents. Clearly, the days of generic he are numbered, even in written language:

It's annoying when someone constantly pats themself on the back.

Other Findings

Khosroshaha found that men are likely to use generic he in writing, whereas women prefer to use the expression he or she. She asked fifty-five first-year psychology students to read five paragraphs about a gender-neutral subject referred to as he, he or she, or they. The students were then asked to draw pictures of the subjects. If the drawings were sex-indefinite, students were asked to give their portraits a name. In addition, Khosroshaha reviewed papers the students had already written for their classes to determine whether they usually used what she calls traditional language — that is, generic he — or reform language — that is, he or she. She found that men and women who used traditional language drew masculine figures, and reform-language women drew female figures (261).

Cameron notes, "those who prefer [he or she constructions] usually justify it by arguing that neutral or genderless terms are often covertly interpreted as masculine, so that if your aim is to ensure that women are included you must mention them explicitly" (156). And, since men have less of a problem using generic he than do women, we can conclude that generic he isn't generic at all; on the contrary, it's blatantly gender exclusive. And since men are more aware of what Tannen calls "the power dynamics of interaction" (246), they are more likely to reject the expression he or she in favor of he, at least in written discourse.

Foertsch and Gernsbacher found that singular they is just as effective a pronoun as he or she and generic he when the gender of the antecedent is unknown. They note that the only problem with singular they is that it is not prescribed; however, their 1997 study found that its proscription has no bearing on understanding. In this study, they asked people to read and interpret sentences whose subjects were either definite (teacher, truck driver) or indefinite (someone, he or she, a person). They found that subjects read and understand sentences containing singular they just as well as sentences that used pronouns referencing a stereotypical antecedent (cf. http://www.geocities.com/jinxcar/SingularThey.pdf).

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Natural vs. Grammatical Gender

There is a tendency among those of us who are not linguists to believe that grammar must adhere to a mathematical sort of logic. As someone once said, "If I hadn't believed it, I wouldn't have seen it"; that is, logic is a variable that exists in the mind's eye of the beholder. Hook observes that in some cultures, it's logical to refer to people in terms of their age rather than their gender. In Japan, for example, "one would not ask 'Where do you think he [single male individual] is living now?' but rather 'Where do you think under [individual under 30] is living now?' (... over refers to someone over that age)" (332). White notes that "Uralic languages such as Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian work without sexual gender" (51). In Romance languages such as Spanish, Italian, and French, possessive pronouns don't indicate the gender of the possessor. In German, a girl or unmarried women is referred to as "it." Modern English has never had a gender-specific third-person-plural pronoun. But as far as English-language speakers are concerned, they have always had the gender-free third-person-singular and plural pronoun, they. Singular they wasn't considered numerically discordant until old-time grammarians decided our language should adhere to the "logic" of Latin as well as to the equally dubious "logic" of male dominance.

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The Problem with Singular They

The main problem with singular they is that people are reluctant to disobey the dictates of what is generally perceived as grammatical correctness. This is not necessarily because they agree with a particular rule; it's because they don't want their readers to think they don't know the rule. Writers are hesitant to use a term such as singular they because their readers might think it's a mistake or, worse, a display of ignorance. Pinker faults those he calls language mavens, "people who set themselves up as language experts" and make other people feel intimidated about using their own language. He writes, "A linguist's question to an informant about some form in [their] speech ... is often lobbed back with the ingenuous counterquestion 'Gee, I better not take a chance; which is correct?'" (388).

Garner ponders the question of singular they in The Dictionary of Modern American Usage: "[Noun-pronoun disagreement] is either one of the most frequent blunders in modern writing or a godsend that allows us to avoid sexism" (147). But he also suggests that writers avoid using singular they, if possible; mainly because "some readers may doubt your literacy" (147).

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Examining the Rule

We have seen that prescriptive rules don't necessarily rely on logic, and they're sometimes borrowed from dissimilar language systems. As Pinker points out, Julius Caesar and other speakers of Latin couldn't have split an infinitive or ended a sentence with a preposition if their lives had depended on it (386); but English speakers commit these linguistic infractions all the time, and they're often punished when they do so in writing. The generic-he rule applies, say prescriptivists, because the pronoun they references a plural antecedent; an assertion, argues Bodine, that loses on at least three fronts. First, as we now know, examples of singular they can be found in ancient texts, as in the following example from 1526 (cf. Churchyard's website):

Yf a psalme scape ony persone, or a lesson, or else yt. they omyt one verse or twayne.

Second, we have no trouble accepting the pronoun you for both single and plural antecedents. And since singular and plural they existed peacefully alongside singular and plural you until the late eighteenth century, the sudden proscription of singular they seems to have been inspired by other motives. Bodine calls those motives sexist:

If the definition of 'they' as exclusively plural is accepted, then 'they' fails to agree with a singular, sex-indefinite antecedent by one feature — that of number. Similarly, 'he' fails to agree with a singular, sex-indefinite antecedent by one feature — that of gender (170).

For some reason, in English, gender can be seen only in the third-person singular. If, in the name of "logic," prescriptivists wish to make sure the numbers concord, there is no reason not to make the genders do the same. Having argued against he or she — which isn't too terrible since the masculine gender still gets to go first — they proscribed singular they and embraced not-so-generic he. And except for a few valiant voices, until the 1970s, most English-language writers, editors, educators, and journalists accepted the rule.

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Searching for the Impossible

Linguists say we cannot artificially import or create function words. They're probably right, for untold numbers of people have tried to find a solution to the pronoun problem in English, and they have all failed. Almost as soon as the new rules went into effect, someone came up with the epicene pronouns hiser and himer. Since then, many more have tried and just as many have belly flopped. Some examples include en, thon, es, he'er, ha, himorher, hse, tey, na, hisorher, ey, ae, et, it, sheshe, hann, herm. While these doomed neologisms may have been unsuccessful because they sound contrived, it's more likely they floated to the bottom because English-language speakers already have a pronoun with which they're quite happy — singular they.

Going Around and Coming Around

As dictionary editors become more descriptivist than prescriptivist, they attempt to define words as they are used, not how grammarians say they're supposed to be used. The 1984 edition of Webster's New World Dictionary defines they as, "The persons, animals, or things previously mentioned; also used with a singular antecedent (as everybody, somebody, everyone)." The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, published in 2002, defines they as "People in general; any persons, not including the speaker. ... In relation to a singular noun or pronoun of undetermined gender, he or she."

Manuals of style are usually, and predictably, more reluctant to shed linguistic norms. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage (1999) commands, "he or she may be used as a last resort to avoid an unwanted assumption of maleness or femaleness in a general reference" (153). But its editors adamantly refuses to admit singular they: "Do not apply they to singular antecedents ... even when the aim is to avoid assuming maleness or femaleness" (330).

Supporters of singular they have at least one esteemed ally, albeit a temporary one. A courageous editor of The Chicago Manual of Style (14th edition) writes:

the University of Chicago Press recommends the revival of the singular use of they and their, citing, as do they, its venerable use by such writers as Addison, Austen, Chesterfield, Fielding, Ruskin, Scott, and Shakespeare" (2.98, note 9). [NB: The editor calls singular they a revival, not an innovation.]

Alas, the editors are considering a retraction. In response to a query about their endorsement of singular they, at least one editor took a cautious step back into the secure arms of prescriptivism:

[T]here is some regret at having written it and we may change our minds in the next edition. I personally would rather avoid this usage, but occasionally it's so difficult to find a way around it that I take comfort in this note of approval and rather dread its removal. (I should add, however, that we will do almost anything to avoid using "s/he." (cf. Pronouns)

In his 1988 edition of English Composition and Grammar, Warriner allows for informal usage of singular they, pointing out the preposterousness that can result from pronoun-antecedent agreement. "This form [singular they] is becoming increasingly popular in writing as well and may someday become acceptable as standard written English" (524).

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Conclusion

Daday argues in favor of singular they by using the same reasoning we apply to collective-noun usage. Specifically, in American English, collective nouns such as audience, family, group, class are treated as singular, "but only if the group acts as a unit" (3). When we think of a unit in terms of its members, it's treated as plural, as in the following quotations:

Give the couple something they'll use every day. (HSN salesperson)

Has the public been misled by the MTA? You bet they have. (NYC Comptroller Thompson).

The central question in the matter of singular they is that of authority. Who has the power to decide how people should use their language? We have seen that history is not on the side of those who would ban singular they from written texts; neither is logic; nor is majority rule. The authority lies in the hands of those who control the press, including publishers and editors of textbooks, style manuals, and dictionaries, popular and specialized journals of all kinds. But as power is given, it can be taken away. As Meyers writes, "[T]he need for a third-person gender-neutral singular pronoun has proven a thorny, but ultimately solvable problem" (419). The majority of speakers of English prefer singular they, and many writers consciously or subconsciously use the term. Generic he is becoming increasingly old-fashioned, and constructions such as he or she or s/he often prove unwieldy, especially in speech. We're left with two choices: import or create a brand new epicene pronoun or legitimize the one native speakers of English have been using for over 1,000 years — singular they.

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