I had thought that I'd read somewhere that it was now acceptable to use "they" instead of either "he" or "she" as the "variable" personal pronoun (as in, "If anyone needs a farecard, they can get one out of this vending machine"). If it makes you resentful to use "he" (I didn't realize I resented it until a St. John's tutor corrected my "they" by changing it to "he"), and it makes you twitchy to allow this use of "they" based solely on the questionable principle that "if people speak it, it's a language. If people do it, it's authentic, so get off my back," then consider this approach: think of the third person plural "they" as a completely different "they" from the other one.
In Italian, the word "lei" is used both for the 2nd person singular pronoun in formal address, and also for the 3rd person singular prounoun. If you do a subtle mental shift and decide that "they" is the new "lei" and that 1) It's about time we invented a new pronoun to represent a concept that sorely needs to be represented linguistically, and that 2)if we all agree not to obssess about subject-verb agreement, then we can pull one of these deals: "the pronoun "they" in this sense
takes the plural verb form."
So, to review, the main idea is that the two "theys" are now offically (if I were dictator, that is, heh heh) NOT the same word. Instead, they are homonyms, two drifters that just happen to look and sound the same but are headed for distinct, yet related destinations.
Voila! What was once an awkward, cheesy workaround, the "poor relation" of the pronoun family, is now suave and European, with greasy hair, five o'clock shadow, and a single gold earring.
And the good news is that we were entitled to an extra pronoun all along, since we didn't take the one we would have needed for using formal address.
posted by Lisa #
12:12 AM |
Perma
Link 
