OED on the language of sexual and gender identity
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On Twitter, Katherine Connor Martin (Head of U.S. dictionaries at Oxford University Press) writes:
In the latest @oed update, dozens of entries relating to sexual and gender identity were revised, the first phase of a project to revisit this rapidly changing segment of the English lexicon.
She links to the lengthy Release Notes, of which the following is just the introduction:
It is fifty years and more since the social phenomenon known as the sexual revolution began to sweep much of the western world. In the subsequent decades, the words with which we describe and refer to our own and other people’s sexual tastes, preferences, and orientations, and the distinct but often overlapping categories of sex and gender identity have emerged from private and specialist contexts to become part of the language of everyday life. In that process, existing vocabulary has been elaborated, tested, found wanting, and augmented with new terms to cover an increasingly complex understanding of these topics. The range and varying register of these words reflects the central importance of sexuality and gender to much of human experience. As a broad semantic group these words stretch from slang and slurs to comfortable colloquial shorthand and on to formal, scientific terminology; they include biblical borrowings, long-obsolete euphemisms the origins and full implications of which are sometimes only dimly graspable, the classificatory jargon of nineteenth and twentieth century sexology and psychology, and almost entirely new words coined as the means of self-expression and self-identification within newly connected communities and groups.
Within this quarter’s update, there are a number of entries making up a small range that was labelled ‘Sex and Gender’ as it passed through the OED‘s revision workflow. The contents of this range are drawn largely from the more scientific, technical end of the lexical spectrum just described, while future updates will include batches of less formal words, both current and historical, relating to human sexuality and gender identity. In spite of its notionally limited scope, this range of entries covers a wealth of material and subjects. It includes Sir Thomas Browne’s uncertain musings on the supposedly bisexous (i.e. hermaphroditic) nature of hares and the ‘Androgynall condition in man’; covers the unsexing of Lady Macbeth in unsex and the engendering of Christ the Son by God the Father in engender, outlines the legal history of the homosexual panic defence and explains the cause of androgenetic alopecia (male, or female, pattern baldness), and records that the words heterosexism and heterosexist are first recorded in the early 1970s, in the work of feminist writers Jill Johnston and Robin Morgan.
If all human life is somehow represented in these entries, then, so is the full historical span of English. OED’s coverage stretches back to Old English for a recipe for a potion which ensures, if it is drunk by both prospective mother and father, that a child will be male, but which, if only the mother partakes, will ensure that the child is ‘an androgyne’. And it shines light on an old but persistent phenomenon—fear among some men of appearing to be gay—in a contemporary manifestation, with a new subentry for the parenthetic disavowal of the homoerotic, no homo.
Despite this obvious richness, the following notes concentrate solely on some of the linguistic choices which speakers and writers of English have made for themselves (and which others have frequently made for us) in describing sexual preferences and behaviour, and also gender identities and expression.
Laura Morland said,
April 3, 2018 @ 4:02 pm
I'm glad I clicked on this post. The subject matter promises to be *much* more interesting than "?p=37577"… which is the title of the post as we received it in our inboxes.
Neal Goldfarb said,
April 3, 2018 @ 4:08 pm
Apologies. I didn't realize I hadn't included a title until i posted it.
Dagwood said,
April 4, 2018 @ 5:42 am
And please check the formatting on "Read the rest of this entry »". It's formatted as quoted material.
James Wimberley said,
April 4, 2018 @ 12:18 pm
In thinking about the future of gendered pronouns, it may be useful to take a look at the demographics of sexual and gender orientation. The numbers you get depends on the question as well as other features of survey design, so the variation is wide. About 5% of the population commonly identifies as homosexual, more for men than women. The transgender frequency is an order of magnitude lower: 04%-0.6% in the USA according to recent metasurveys.
Now for pronouns, transsexuality or transgender identification per se is not the issue. Transsexual people prepared to undergo traumatic sex-change surgery are not in any doubt about their true gender, and presumably don't worry about the pronouns. The population of interest here is the subset who don't fit themselves readily into a binary classification. This activist British site suggests it's a quarter, which looks reasonable as a first approximation. So we are now down to 0.1% or thereabouts, one in a thousand.
However, transgender people – and a fortiori the non-binary among them – have many serious things to worry about: rejection by parents and peer group; suicidal despair; the closet or not; job discrimination; the difficulty of finding a partner; and bullying and worse violence from bigots. Only a proportion will have the energy to worry about pronouns. Let's generously guess a quarter again. That's now one in four thousand, 0.025%.
Has any group of this size ever succeeded in pushing through a linguistic change? These numbers – or more precisely the hierarchy in frequency they inexactly reflect – constrain the likelihood of a sympathetic response to any activist proposal.
Acquaintanceship may not be relevant ethically to the pronoun case. But it is very relevant pragmatically to the chance of sympathy. The typical circle of acquaintance is said to be around 250. It varies, and conscientious professors will know more people: say 1,000. It's hard for any of us to remember more faces. So a representative conscientious professor will:
– very probably know at least one transgender person, not necessarily declared;
– have an even chance of knowing at least one non-binary transgender person (ditto);
– is unlikely to know a non-binary person who is seriously concerned about pronouns.
The pronoun lobby is so small that its chances of success in a binary world are very slim indeed. About the same order of magnitude as peevers about "hopefully" and (speaking for my one-man peeve lobby) "careen". Will nobody think of the pirates?
Ellen K. said,
April 4, 2018 @ 12:53 pm
@Dagwood. It's formatted as a quote because it is a quote.
Chandra said,
April 4, 2018 @ 1:45 pm
@James Wimberley – There is quite a strong wave of support for nonbinary pronouns in the general LGBTQ+ community, even amongst those of us who don't use them ourselves or personally know many/any people who do. I think this is because one of the hallmarks of modern social activism is intersectionality, or the recognition that many individuals have multiple marginalized identities, which leads to mutual support and activism in pushing for the rights of all marginalized groups at once.
david said,
April 4, 2018 @ 4:06 pm
I wonder if Sir Thomas Brown was referring to bisexous sea hares, e.g. Aplysia , which change sex during their lifetimes. Does anyone with OED access have the time and interest to get a better reference? tia
Philip Taylor said,
April 4, 2018 @ 5:27 pm
"To hear is to obey" : [blockquote]1646 Sir T. Browne [i]Pseudodoxia Epidemica[/i] xvii. 149 We..concede, that Hares have been of both sexes..; but that the whole species or kinde should be bisexous we cannot affirme. [/blockquote]
Jerry Friedman said,
April 4, 2018 @ 8:39 pm
david: You can read the whole passage at Google Books. Browne appears to be talking about regular old hares.
Philip Taylor: At this site you have to use HTML tags enclosed in < and >.
Or maybe david was already going to search GB and Philip already guessed that how to do the tags.
tangent said,
April 4, 2018 @ 11:40 pm
James Wimberly, are you discussing some particular pronoun change, or a general idea?
Among people I know, "they" is the most common nonbinary pronoun. Conveniently, use of "they" is broadening much more widely as has been much discussed on this very Log. This eases its use for nonbinary people.
"Zie" probably has a harder time.
finka said,
April 5, 2018 @ 5:57 am
"Zie" probably has a harder time.
Not least because this spelling for it is badly chosen and can't be interpreted as regular. The regular pronunciation of "zie" in English must be /zaɪ/ (PRICE), but this pronoun is meant to be /ziː/ (FLEECE). "Ze" patterning with "be she he me we ye" and stressed "the" is much more defensible.
Philip Taylor said,
April 5, 2018 @ 6:34 am
Jerry : yes, sorry, I was switching between two different fora, and forgot to amend my markup conventions accordingly.
"Zie" — When I first read this, I assumed that we were discussing a German word; from later comments, this would seem not to be the case. could somone explain "Zie", please ?
rosie said,
April 5, 2018 @ 7:31 am
"Zie", for use in English, is the chosen pronoun of some non-binary people.
tangent wrote I agree with them: as well as the issue of spelling and pronunciation mentioned by finka, the great disadvantage of "zie" is that it is little-known. By contrast, "they" is already an English third-person pronoun, and is even used as a third-person singular pronoun when the referent is unknown. It is not much of a semantic leap to use "they" as a third-person singular pronoun when the referent is known.
rosie said,
April 5, 2018 @ 7:32 am
"Zie", for use in English, is the chosen pronoun of some non-binary people.
tangent wrote ' "Zie" probably has a harder time. ' I agree with them: as well as the issue of spelling and pronunciation mentioned by finka, the great disadvantage of "zie" is that it is little-known. By contrast, "they" is already an English third-person pronoun, and is even used as a third-person singular pronoun when the referent is unknown. It is not much of a semantic leap to use "they" as a third-person singular pronoun when the referent is known.
[corrected to avoid markup ]
Ellen K. said,
April 5, 2018 @ 8:50 am
"They", in addition to it's use when speaking of a single un-known person, is also, in the Internet age, used of a known person of unknown gender, where we simply do not have gender information for a person of which we are speaking. Which makes for even smaller leap to using it for a person we know to be agender or bigender.
Ellen K. said,
April 5, 2018 @ 9:09 am
Regarding "zie", I guess it looks German to me, like as if it were a word that came from German, because my assumption reading it was that it's pronounced /zi/. Whereas "ze" looks to me like it should be pronounced /ze/ (rhyming with day).
JJM said,
April 5, 2018 @ 9:13 am
James Wimberley: "The pronoun lobby is so small that its chances of success in a binary world are very slim indeed."
You have hit the nail on the head right there: the usage norms of the overwhelming majority of native English speakers outnumber those of the lobby in question by such an exponentially huge order.
From a purely language perspective, boutique or "proper" pronouns are entirely counter-intuitive. Pronouns are a closed and highly change-resistant set of words (it's no surprise that they represent the only words in English that retain a true objective/oblique case form).
That's not "discrimination"; that's just language.
Further, it has taken centuries for "singular they" to evolve and even now its collective, "sex-irrelevant" usage has clear limits i.e., we say "they" for any generalized doctor, student or driver, but we don't say "they" for a specific doctor, student or driver, so it's a bit disingenuous to claim we do.
david said,
April 5, 2018 @ 9:24 am
Thank you Philip and Jerry. From the google book link it is clear that Browne derives most of his biology from ancient literature and seems to suggest that Adam (?themself) was androgynous. Sea hares were known to the ancient Romans, according to Wikipedia, but probably not to Browne.
Ellen K. said,
April 5, 2018 @ 9:32 am
I should have said "writing" instead of "speaking" in my first comment above, since we are more likely to be writing, than speaking, of someone whose gender is unknown to us.
Christian Weisgerber said,
April 5, 2018 @ 10:24 am
I find it interesting that attempts to coin a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun in English invariably try to create one from scratch (e.g. "zie" mentioned above or Greg Egan's "ve") rather than using a process of derivation.
Indo-European languages have a history of creating third person pronouns from demonstratives. In fact, it is thought that PIE may not have had any overt third person pronouns at all. The daughter languages filled in the gap using various demonstratives. Over time the new pronouns wear down and are replaced by demonstratives again; think Latin > Romance. (In English, "she" is thought to derive from a demonstrative and the whole "they" paradigm was borrowed wholesale from Old Norse which in turn had derived it from a demonstrative—the resemblance to "this" etc is not coincidental.)
Another source of new pronouns are nouns and noun phrases. Like Spanish, Portuguese has turned a noun phrase meaning 'your mercy' into a second person pronoun: "você". At least in the Southern Brazil TV Portuguese I see on Netflix, this appears to have displaced the original second person completely. But since people like their T-V distinction, a new formal address "o senhor"/"a senhora" has been coined. Meanwhile, there are also literary third person "o mesmo"/etc. ('the same') and informal first person plural "a gente" ('the people') pronouns that still look like noun phrases. The useful indefinite third person pronouns German "man" and French "on" were derived from the respective word for human being. (Currently, "on" is displacing the inherited first person plural in French.)
@JJM
Well…
JJM said,
April 5, 2018 @ 11:17 am
It strikes me as pointless to use the gradual evolution of personal pronouns in Indo-European languages over centuries and millennia as examples when the proponents of "gender neutrality" in English are clamouring for immediate societal enforcement. That 1500-year passage from Old English personal pronouns to their Modern English counterparts suggests they're going to have quite a long wait.
Comparing other European languages to English on this issue is always going to be problematic. French has no capacity for "gender-neutrality" because every noun and pronoun must be either masculine or feminine; there is absolutely no grammatical alternative (even if you made up your own personal pronoun in French, it would still have to be either masculine or feminine). The only way you can deal with this in French is to be "gender-inclusive" (e.g., using "ceux et celles" instead of "ceux").
Both "on" and "man" are masculine in French and German respectively. Note that when you replace plural "ils/elles" with singular "on", the gender is automatically masculine.
If we're determined to be prescriptivist about personal pronouns (for that is exactly what "gender-neutrality" is), here's my suggestion: ditch "he" and "she" and just use "it" for the singular. The pronoun "it" is already used with the vast majority of English nouns, so why not extend it to replace the small corpus of nouns that require "he" and "she"? Problem solved!
James Wimberley said,
April 5, 2018 @ 11:56 am
Christian: my Brazilian wife – a retired TV actor – tells me that "tu" is alive and well in the country, in the street and on TV, in informal contexts and when speaking to children. As well as "vocé" of course.
DWalker07 said,
April 5, 2018 @ 12:47 pm
@JJM: I don't think using "it" in place of "he" or "she" or "they" or "zie" will happen. "It" just sounds too much like a thing, too inanimate. But that's my guess.
J.W. Brewer said,
April 5, 2018 @ 1:15 pm
It is common cross-linguistically for formal morphosyntactically-marked gender categories (including pronouns, I believe) to be arranged by an animacy hierarchy rather than along Masc/Fem/Neut lines, but the trace parallel phenomenon in English (which accounts for the unacceptability of "it" for post-newborn humans as well as the unacceptability of "it" for other people's pet animals that they feel more emotionally attached to than you might) tends not to be explicitly taught, outside of maybe ESL situations. So people have strong and accurate intuitions about when "it" does and doesn't fit without necessarily being able to explain them.
Chandra said,
April 5, 2018 @ 1:25 pm
@JJM: "i.e., we say "they" for any generalized doctor, student or driver, but we don't say "they" for a specific doctor, student or driver, so it's a bit disingenuous to claim we do."
It isn't disingenuous at all, and in fact several such incidents have been discussed here on this blog. You may not use it that way yourself, but there is increasing evidence that others do.
J.W. Brewer said,
April 5, 2018 @ 1:59 pm
Separately, following the link to the OED's current online entry on "engender" I tend to agree that its sense 6.a ("To give rise to (a state of affairs, feeling, condition, etc.); to cause people to feel (a particular emotion)") is now "the usual sense" or at least the most common sense. I find it intriguing or at least amusing that that's the sense most abstracted from the original and more carnal core sense of physically begetting physical offspring via intercourse between male and female. That "usual sense" has thus no connection at all to "gender" in the currently-dominant masc/fem/whatever sense other than a quite remote etymological one.
But I also find it intriguing/amusing that the OED seems not yet to have picked up on a newer usage, in vogue in current academic jargon, that explicitly ties the verb back to the current sense of "gender," as seen in titles like "Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare's English Histories," or "Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s," or Engendering development through gender equality in rights, resources, and voice."
V said,
April 5, 2018 @ 2:10 pm
As an agender person I very much appreciate "they" being used for me.
Jerry Friedman said,
April 5, 2018 @ 5:25 pm
J. W. Brewer: Is that a new usage, or is it the familiar "generate, give rise to" sense wittily (at least the first time) applied to subjects that explicitly involve gender?
JJM said,
April 6, 2018 @ 7:13 am
"It isn't disingenuous at all, and in fact several such incidents have been discussed here on this blog. You may not use it that way yourself, but there is increasing evidence that others do…"
Day-to-day, I meet the sum total of no one – absolutely no one – who uses "singular they" this way. Its use – such as it is – is quite clearly confined to a very tiny demographic within a particular ideological orientation.
Ellen K. said,
April 6, 2018 @ 9:06 am
So, JJM, what we see isn't real, since you don't see it. Do I have that correct?
Philip Taylor said,
April 6, 2018 @ 9:29 am
Ellen, I think that JJM is reporting reality rather than wishful thinking. There may be good reasons why some people are seeking to introduce gender-neutral pronouns into human language, but in reality the number of people who would be willing to adapt their speech patterns accordingly is unlikely to be significant. Consider the much-vaunted "Ms" — frequently used in writing, but what fraction of the population actually say /məz/ on a regular basis ?
Ellen K. said,
April 6, 2018 @ 10:05 am
He's reporting reality when he says what we claim to have seen isn't real?
JJM said,
April 6, 2018 @ 11:38 am
Philip Taylor: "Ellen, I think that JJM is reporting reality rather than wishful thinking."
In a nutshell.
JJM said,
April 6, 2018 @ 11:44 am
I'd rate "Ms" as a far more viable usage than the "extended singular they". After all, the potential demographic for Ms is half the entire English-speaking world.
Also, I actually do routinely encounter women who use "Ms". But then, Ms is neither a pronoun nor "gender-neutral".
Philip Taylor said,
April 6, 2018 @ 11:45 am
JJM is reporting what he (or she) has experienced. The fact that your experience differs from his/hers does not make his/her experience any less real, nor does it make his/her report of his/her expeiences any less valid or any less relevant to the discussion.
JJM said,
April 6, 2018 @ 12:02 pm
Regarding "it", I was playing devil's advocate.
But "it" is effectively the "Ghost of Grammatical Gender Past" in English, far more so than "he" and "she". The neuter gender still comprises a corpus of nouns that represent both the animate and inanimate e.g., house, tree, Confucianism, squirrel, water, child, panoply and cardboard.
Chandra said,
April 6, 2018 @ 1:44 pm
@JJM: "Its use – such as it is – is quite clearly confined to a very tiny demographic within a particular ideological orientation."
Except that I wasn't talking about any particular demographic or ideological orientation. Please see here, here, here, here, here and here for what I was actually referring to.
@Philip Taylor: "Consider the much-vaunted "Ms" — frequently used in writing, but what fraction of the population actually say /məz/ on a regular basis ?"
I write and use "Ms." for myself, as do my wife and many of my friends and acquaintances. Its spoken usage is entirely commonplace and unremarkable for me.
Mick O said,
April 6, 2018 @ 2:15 pm
For Philip Taylor and extended singular they:
"JJM is reporting what he (or she) has experienced." True, but you've missed that JJM is ALSO saying that since JJM doesn't see it, it is not happening anywhere, and that anyone who says it does happen anywhere is being "disingenuous."
Chandra and Ellen K. say that they have seen it happening somewhere, therefore it does happen somewhere.
Do you see the problem with JJM's position?
Mick O said,
April 6, 2018 @ 2:29 pm
I'm also of the opinion that trying to estimate the possibility or efficacy of linguistic development solely from the actual number of entities being referred to is actually rather nonsensical. I have words for king, queen, god, diamond, ytterbium, and the like, some with very specific pronouns used in certain cases. All very rare entities that did not depend on a "lobby*" for sensible, usable terms to arise for and about them.
* the term "lobby," here intended to diminish or belittle anyone opposed to the original speaker's viewpoint, I suspect.
Chandra said,
April 6, 2018 @ 3:28 pm
An amendment to my previous comment: replace the first link I included with this one.
Philip Taylor said,
April 6, 2018 @ 3:43 pm
Chandra : "I write and use 'Ms.' for myself, as do my wife and many of my friends and acquaintances. Its spoken usage is entirely commonplace and unremarkable for me". I do not dispute that for one instant. But what fraction of the world's population do you, your family, your friends and acquaintances represent ? I would respectfully suggest "an insignificant fraction", in purely statistical terms. So unless you are able to demonstrate that your usage accords with that of the majority, then I don't think that your argument invalidates my own — my point was that spoken usage of /məz/ (as opposed to written usage of "Ms") remains — despite the fact that, as JJM points out, those potentially affected represent roughly 50% of the population — rather restricted, and is certainly not a part of the routine spoken language of the majority of those with whom I speak on a regular basis.
Chandra said,
April 7, 2018 @ 12:04 am
@Philip Taylor – I wasn't attempting to invalidate your argument, I was answering the question you posed by offering a contrasting perspective. Though it bears pointing out that you, your family and your friends also represent an insignificant fraction of the world's population, and thus your anecdotal evidence about the usage of "Ms." doesn't prove your argument any more than mine disproves it.
James Wimberley said,
April 7, 2018 @ 5:56 am
Thanks to commenters for your courteous and informed responses to my observations. It's great that LL, a blog for professionals, is ready to take input from amateurs seriously.
My pennyworth in "they". I was thinking about the proposals for radically new pronouns like "zie" when I wrote. The repurposing of "they" is different. As others have said, it's partial not complete. We have not reached the point where the antecedent can be "Kim Kardashian". (It would be handy for non-binary proper names like "Evelyn" and "Tracy", and ones in fireugb languages you don't know well.) The extension is an addition to the toolkit, not a replacement, like "vocé".
The group advocating "they" is much larger than non-binary transgender people. It includes feminists combatting gender stereotyping of jobs, a very large number. I worked for a long time as an international civil servant, drafting high-minded reports, recommendations, and the odd convention. We were well aware of the risk of unconscious bias. If you are writing about good practice in organ transplants, it's easy to write "the surgeon should … he…". The options for avoiding this were repetition and "he or she", both clumsy. "They" wasn't on our radar yet, but I'd have used it if it had been available. The demographics of this change in usage are much more favourable.
James Wimberley said,
April 7, 2018 @ 6:02 am
"Ms." is surely now standard in business and administrative correspondence. The gas company neither knows nor cares about the marital status of its customers. It does care about not annoying them needlessly.
Philip Taylor said,
April 7, 2018 @ 6:28 am
James : My observation was not regarding "Ms" (written usage); it was purely concerned with the usage of /məz/ (spoken). I continue to believe that while "Ms" is now more common in written usage (and probably annoys as many people as would the use of "Mrs" or "Miss", simply the complementary set), /məz/ in speech continues to be a niche usage and is likely to remain so.
Incidentally, after some considerable introspection, I think that JJM was incorrect in suggesting that no-one would use "they" for a singular doctor, student or driver — it seems to me that what matters is not what rôle or status a person has, but whether they are personally known to the speaker. Thus on returning home from a hospital appointment, I would report what the doctor said using "he" or "she" as appropriate; but if I received a letter from the hospital asking me to make an appointment to see Dr Patel, then I would probably refer to Dr Patel as "they" (or "he or she") if I did not know his/her sex.
Doug said,
April 7, 2018 @ 7:56 am
Philip Taylor said:
"my point was that spoken usage of /məz/ (as opposed to written usage of "Ms") remains… rather restricted, and is certainly not a part of the routine spoken language of the majority of those with whom I speak on a regular basis."
I guess this depends who you hang out with.
In my own experience, in a business context (at least the insurance business in the New York City area), spoken use of Ms. is common — certainly more common than "Miss" or "Mrs." If you refer to or address someone at work with "Miss" or "Mrs." people will look at you funny, since these usages are hopelessly old-fashioned. Most people nowadays are on a first-name basis with their colleagues and even their bosses, so even "Mr." is less common than in the old days, but if a woman gets title+last name, it's almost sure to be "Ms.", not "Miss" or "Mrs."
In my 30 years of work in the insurance business, I think I called someone "Mrs." exactly once — she'd gotten married the previous week, so I light-heartedly addressed her as Mrs. New-last-name.
(Incidentally, I've always hear "Ms." pronounced with "short I" (as in "kit" rather than schwa.)
JJM said,
April 7, 2018 @ 7:59 am
"Incidentally, after some considerable introspection, I think that JJM was incorrect in suggesting that no-one would use "they" for a singular doctor, student or driver…"
Except I never said that:
"[W]e say 'they' for any generalized doctor, student or driver, but we don't say 'they' for a specific doctor, student or driver, so it's a bit disingenuous to claim we do."
Faced with an appointment to see a "Dr Patel" whose sex has somehow not been stated in the message, I would never use "they" in response; I'm also happy to wager that the vast majority of people would either use "he or she" or, much more likely, would simply inquire whether the doctor is a man or a woman (when it comes to medical care, a not unreasonable question at all: a woman might prefer a female doctor; a man might prefer a male one.)
I might make the statement:
"Any doctor will give that advice to their patients."
But if I make the doctor a known entity i.e., my doctor, then "they" suddenly becomes unidiomatic and even oddly ambiguous (depending on context):
"My doctor will give that advice to their patients."
If I were talking about my doctor, I would say:
"My doctor will give that advice to her patients."
JJM said,
April 7, 2018 @ 8:04 am
I might add that what hasn't been addressed here is the effect of "any", "every", "some" and "no" in predicating the use of "singular they".
Philip Taylor said,
April 7, 2018 @ 8:10 am
Doug — "(Incidentally, I've always hear "Ms." pronounced with "short I" (as in "kit" rather than schwa)" . I have a feeling that the choice of vowel may well be significant here — those that use the KIT vowel are probably using "Ms" as a term of respect, those who use schwa may well be using it sarcastically, in which case it will also probably be stressed (/mɪz paˈtɛl/ v. /ˈmz patɛl/).
Ellen Kozisek said,
April 7, 2018 @ 8:39 am
To say that nobody says "Ms." outloud (by whatever pronunciation) is entirely beside the point. It gets used in writing, even if it's rarely heard in speech. (I would rate it as less common in speech than writing.) Likewise, use of "you" for a specific individual in a written context counts as real, even if it's less common in speech than in writing. One of the contexts for it's use, not knowing the person's gender, is I would think more likely in written contexts. Like, if I were to use a third person pronoun for JJM, I would probably use "they" rather than assume their gender. Oh, and now there we have an example. (I selected JJM simply because they are the first person I found posting with an ungendered name, scrolling up from the bottom.)
On pronunciation I would say Ms is pronounced /miz/ (and the two dictionaries I checked give that as the only listed pronunciation). So whether or not people say /məz/ is even more beside the point.
JJM said,
April 7, 2018 @ 12:36 pm
"I selected JJM simply because they are the first person I found posting with an ungendered name, scrolling up from the bottom."
Au contraire, mon amie!
My name is not "ungendered" at all; "JJM" quite clearly represents the initials of a male or female person. The fact that you don't know whether I'm male or female doesn't make me or my name "ungendered". From a language perspective, I am not some sort of generalized, sex-irrelevant JJM – as if there were thousands of us like doctors, architects, firefighters, elephant-trainers and choreographers – I am either "he" or "she" (if my initials have not yet provided any cultural clues that I'm most likely male, let me just reveal all: I am a man).
I stand by my central objection to attempts at showing the "singular they" is somehow slipping the bounds of common usage and becoming an all-purpose "gender-neutral" personal pronoun. Once I start hearing and seeing this extended usage employed routinely and unconsciously by ordinary everyday English speakers – truck drivers, bank tellers, my plumber, the two big farmers at my pub, the women in the local municipal office – then I'll buy it.
Until that happens, its much-touted widened usage strikes me as entirely suspect, ideological and prescriptive in tone.
Ellen Kozisek said,
April 7, 2018 @ 1:32 pm
JJM, my point is your name (that is, "JJM") does not carry gender information. And, no, it does not indicate you to be male or female. For all I can tell just from your name, you could be an ungendered spambot. Admittedly, the content of your posts makes that unlikely, but I can't tell that from your name. You could also, like V (comment on April 5, 2018 @ 2:10 pm), be agender. But when I say your name is ungendered, I mean it conveys no information about your gender. Nothing more or less. Thus, use of "their", because I did not wish to assume you to be male. I've no clue why you think I should assume you are male based on your initials. There's plenty of female names that begin with J.
Ellen Kozisek said,
April 7, 2018 @ 1:33 pm
And I still maintain that written usage counts as real.
JJM said,
April 7, 2018 @ 7:49 pm
By your insistent use of the dubious terms "ungendered" and "agender" you've made it clear that your interest here is ideological in nature rather than based on language.
[(myl) The person here most focused on ideology rather than facts or logic seems to be you. And your level of empirically empty aggression is beyond what our comments policy allows. Please stop or you'll be banned.]