death to singular 'they'

[fox]

'Note that if a child did not use the SDG [speaker's direction of gaze] strategy, they would be thrown back on the alternative, namely, assuming that a novel word uttered by a speaker refers to the object that they (the listener) are currently looking at.' from "Do Children with Autism Use the Speaker's Direction of Gaze Strategy to Crack the Code of Language?", by Simon Baron-Cohen, Dare A. Baldwin, and Mary Crowson, in Child Development, February 1997, 68(1), 48-57.

a child ... they. the listener are. can y'all hear me gouging my eyes out over here?

[eta: especially when there already is a plural antecedent! don't they see the confusion this can cause?! 'Parents do not announce to their infant, "look where I look when I utter a novel word" (because they wouldn't understand this anyway) ...']

answer me this: what the hell would have been wrong, in this context, with "if children did not use the SDG, they would be thrown back on the alternative, namely, assuming that a novel word uttered by a speaker refers [actually i'd prefer 'referred'] to the object that they (the listeners) are ['were'] currently looking at"? what?!

Comments

[the-emu.livejournal.com]

You'll get no support from me.

Okay, maybe 'children' would have made it better, but I hereby wave pom poms and do high kicks in favour of singular 'they'.

8^-

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on that.

Not because I think it's better language, but in the environment I work in (government) we have to do mental fandangoes to avoid using sexist language. The singular 'they' is a useful beast if you're trying to avoid giving offence to the minority (it's 5% of the total) of single parent fathers who claim maintenance. This group a very, very vocal if they perceive that they're being ignored, and using the singular 'they' is infinitely preferable to dealing with furious ten page letters from Angry Single Father of Cheltenham.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

personally, i tend to alternate generic "he" with generic "she", and my life is pretty good. but when (as for this one professor i have who hates generic either-gender) i can't do that, "he or she" works better than "they". ('the listener are' really doesn't make you insane?)

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Rather than using 'the listener are' and such phrases, I think I'd avoid it by casting the whole sentence into plural - 'listeners are...they...' and so on.

What I meant above is that when you're being paid to write, you are obliged to follow your employer's style guidelines whatever you might think about them. Our style guidelines state that a singular 'their' is preferred over the clumsy 'he or she', particularly if you're going to have to use it five times in a comparatively short paragraph. And it really isn't a good idea in the kind of writing I do to appear to favour one gender over the other - if 95% of applicants for child maintenance are female, that means 5% of them are male, and you ignore that at your peril.

[the-emu.livejournal.com]

Though, I must add...

Since linguists are, at the very heart of what they do, looking at how we communicate, why, why oh why, are they such godawful communicators? Why do the very people who best understand how people take in information insist on using overly complex sentences, distanced style and impenetrable language?

Why are academic linguistic papers so fucking awfully written?

~deep breath~

I'd forgotten how much that bothered me.

8^-

in defense of linguists:

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

this is a psychology paper.

:-)

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Singular 'they' has a long, long pedigree: Singular "their" in Jane Austen and Elsewhere (http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html). And I love it.

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I had a feeling we'd had this argument at work, and the 'he or she' proponents had lost, at least partly due to singular 'their' having a long history. To be honest, I prefer it over 'he or she' or the generic 'he'. I don't mind a generic 'she' quite so much.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

the fact that jane austen did it doesn't make it right. :-) or, more accurately, the fact that jane austen did it doesn't mean i have to like it, do it, or admit that it's not clunky as all living fuck -- in fact, actually misleading -- in a sentence like 'Parents do not announce to their infant, "look where I look when I utter a novel word" (because they wouldn't understand this anyway)'.

i continue to maintain that there's no excuse for using singular 'they' when a plural antecedent was possible.