| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | He, she or they? Thread poster: Lesley Clarke
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neilmac
Spain
Local time: 11:12
Spanish to English
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| Round of applause | Apr 30, 2012 |
Phil Hand wrote:
"Here's something I put together for a business writing course that was canceled for lack of interest"
Truth always hurts.
| | | | | Contracts for a bank, you say? | Apr 30, 2012 |
Lesley Clarke wrote:
I was dithering in the case of what pronouns to use in a generic contract for a bank customer, that could just as easily be an individual or a company.
http://cbavington.com/blog/2011/05/18/the-wonder-of-you/
Modern UK usage is tending towards the 2nd not 3rd person.
Thus avoiding one problem for us, but perhaps creating another for anyone having to translate them out of English.
Except, of course, chances are they (ooo, what sort of "they" could I possibly mean? ) will probably be able to use a 3rd person singular of the precise sort English doesn't really have for these circs and thus the circle is complete and universal harmony is restored.
| | | | | I honestly think that feminists are better served by actions, not words! | Apr 30, 2012 |
At the risk of geting off topic, I honestly think that the feminist cause is better served by actions, not words.
I believe in gender equality, but vive la différence! If you have time to quibble about grammar without being able to find a satisfactory solution, then you haven't got a serious problem!
A myth from the 60s:
The manager of a fire station was asked by an enthusiastic feminist why only men could be firemen.
After a long speech, she drew br... See more At the risk of geting off topic, I honestly think that the feminist cause is better served by actions, not words.
I believe in gender equality, but vive la différence! If you have time to quibble about grammar without being able to find a satisfactory solution, then you haven't got a serious problem!
A myth from the 60s:
The manager of a fire station was asked by an enthusiastic feminist why only men could be firemen.
After a long speech, she drew breath and let him answer.
"Well, you seem to have the necessary lung capacity for smoke diving...
In principle we take on anyone who can meet the physical requirements. That excludes a lot of men and NEARLY all women. It's not really sexist."
As with split infinitives, people use 'they' because the suggested alternatives - one, extensive use of the passive... all sound so clumsy, and the plural is at least as inappropriate in many situations. How many spouses can one person have? Legally, no, no, go home and embrace each other...
The more fuss a (wo)man makes about it, and the more attention (s)he draws to the irritating grammar, the more likely the reader will be to decide that in his/her opinion it's a load of rubbish anyway.
[Edited at 2012-04-30 15:37 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | we (in Italian) use the asterisk... | Apr 30, 2012 |
Gentil* collegh*
Great, eh?
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Anything is better than the practice among some groups here in Spain who think that this makes sense: "L@s compañer@s iniciaron la marcha."
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Neil Coffey 
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:12
French to English
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| There *is* an impact, though... | Apr 30, 2012 |
David Wright wrote:
some people can really talk rubbish! I actually feel sorry for people who seem to suffer mentally because other people use language differently to/from (?) them. But not really worth taking seriously!
There *is* a subtle negative effect of this kind of nonsense, though. As many of our colleagues here, but not necessarily the wider non-specialist public, will appreciate, most prescriptive grammar/language commentary is based on flawed logic and unscholarly methodology.
And yet this stuff gets lapped up by educational institutions and the public at large.
Do we really want to propagate (pseudo-)educational material based on flawed logic and unscholarly methodology?
| | | | Giles Watson
Italy
Local time: 11:12
Italian to English
In memoriam | Propagation, education and expectation | Apr 30, 2012 |
Neil Coffey wrote:
Do we really want to propagate (pseudo-)educational material based on flawed logic and unscholarly methodology?
Yes, at least in some circumstances.
Non-native users of any language expect grammar to be prescriptive. The learner-focused grammar textbooks they and their teachers rely on lay down rules because that is what a learner needs in order to be productive in the target language.
Descriptive grammar, which attempts to establish the facts before drawing any conclusions, is more scientific but less than ideal for teaching purposes, particularly at lower levels of proficiency.
If I can put in a plug here for the study of classical languages, a knowledge of Greek and Latin grammar has been a useful customer-binding tool for me on many occasions as it enables me to discuss linguistic cruxes with clients in their own language.
Giles
PS We've discussed this pronoun dilemma before.
| | | | Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:12
Hebrew to English
| "Spoken Grammar" | Apr 30, 2012 |
Giles Watson wrote:
Descriptive grammar, which attempts to establish the facts before drawing any conclusions, is more scientific but less than ideal for teaching purposes, particularly at lower levels of proficiency.
There is a growing interest in ELT these days in teaching descriptive (or so-called "spoken") grammar - the grammar of how people actually speak (heavily based on corpus data I believe).
Some of it is very interesting, it proposes an entirely different way of teaching conditionals, rather than the artificial zero, first, second, third, mixed conditionals.
It's still in its infancy and has a long way to go to garner more support, on top of that, the goliaths of the ELT publishing industry still slavishly stick to prescriptive grammar syllabi.
| | | | Sheila Wilson
Spain
Local time: 10:12
Member (2007)
English
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| Another agree | Apr 30, 2012 |
neilmac wrote: David Wright wrote:
some people can really talk rubbish! I actually feel sorry for people who seem to suffer mentally because other people use language differently to/from (?) them. But not really worth taking seriously! As soon as I saw the words "'Their' is absolutely wrong. The correct pronoun is ..." I'm afraid stopped reading. There is obviously no point arguing with that particular couch authority...
English lives, OK? If I were/was to list all the differences between my father's idea of "correct English" and my son's ideas, I'd have a very long list. Nothing to do with quality of education or anything like that, just a different timeframe.
British and American English both changed over the centuries, in ways that suited their environment. We shouldn't expect English to stand still now when the environment is changing so fast.
Sheila
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Phil Hand
China
Local time: 17:12
Chinese to English
| Unsupported assertions about teaching = not cool | May 1, 2012 |
Giles, that's really not OK. You know how translators (and other language professionals) get annoyed when every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks "I can use language, I reckon I my opinion on your work is just as valid as yours..." Well, no, actually, I do this for a living and I got degrees in it.
The same applies to teaching. Your claim:
"that is what a learner needs in order to be productive in the target language"
is completely unsupported. Who knows, it might... See more Giles, that's really not OK. You know how translators (and other language professionals) get annoyed when every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks "I can use language, I reckon I my opinion on your work is just as valid as yours..." Well, no, actually, I do this for a living and I got degrees in it.
The same applies to teaching. Your claim:
"that is what a learner needs in order to be productive in the target language"
is completely unsupported. Who knows, it might be true, but I for one have never seen a study noting the beneficial effects of teaching the no-split-infinitive rule to (a) young English children or (b) foreign learners. And my suspicion is that that's because there is no benefit.
In the absence of evidence, I don't think these sweeping but very questionable assertions add much to the argument. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Giles Watson
Italy
Local time: 11:12
Italian to English
In memoriam | Descriptions and prescriptions | May 1, 2012 |
Phil Hand wrote:
Giles, that's really not OK. You know how translators (and other language professionals) get annoyed when every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks "I can use language, I reckon I my opinion on your work is just as valid as yours..." Well, no, actually, I do this for a living and I got degrees in it.
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, Phil.
When you learn a second language, you need to start somewhere. Most learners are not babies who can listen to language unfiltered by first-language assumptions for many hundreds of hours before attempting their first speech. They have less time and more linguistic preconceptions.
The same applies to teaching. Your claim:
"that is what a learner needs in order to be productive in the target language"
is completely unsupported.
Again, I'm sorry if I gave the impression that a grammar is necessary. My point was that a prescriptive grammar is more likely to be useful to a low-level learner than a descriptive one. But if the learner has no prior knowledge of grammar, or insists on projecting first-language grammar onto the second language, a grammar may not be of much use.
Luckily, language learners (and their teachers) have plenty of other tools in the box.
Who knows, it might be true, but I for one have never seen a study noting the beneficial effects of teaching the no-split-infinitive rule to (a) young English children or (b) foreign learners. And my suspicion is that that's because there is no benefit.
Who said anything about specific grammar rules? My point regarded the relative benefits to learners of prescriptive and descriptive approaches to grammar.
In the absence of evidence, I don't think these sweeping but very questionable assertions add much to the argument.
I feel you may have taken what I said out of context. In any case, we've rather gone off on a tangent here (the word "grammar" does tend to get people's knees - mine included - jerking!).
| | | | Silvia Zele
Australia
Local time: 19:12
Slovenian to English
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| English Style Guide | May 1, 2012 |
The handbook, ‘English Style Guide: A handbook for authors and translators in the European Commission’, published by the European Commission Directorate-General for Translations, gives suggestions on using gender-neutral language (see pages 52 and 53 of the pdf).
A very useful resource to rely upon when translating EU documents, and there is the added benefit that it is a free document that can be emailed to clients and quoted if there are any queries about word or punctuation c... See more The handbook, ‘English Style Guide: A handbook for authors and translators in the European Commission’, published by the European Commission Directorate-General for Translations, gives suggestions on using gender-neutral language (see pages 52 and 53 of the pdf).
A very useful resource to rely upon when translating EU documents, and there is the added benefit that it is a free document that can be emailed to clients and quoted if there are any queries about word or punctuation choices.
http://ec.europa.eu/translation/english/guidelines/documents/styleguide_english_dgt_en.pdf ▲ Collapse
| | | | | But it can be so entertaining.. | May 1, 2012 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
"L@s compañer@s iniciaron la marcha."
That's a good one, but I know an even better one in German, a notice written in the bathroom:
ToilettenbenutzerInnen bitte nicht im Stehen pinkeln!
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Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:12
French to English
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| Educational need for prescriptivism for L2 learners? | May 1, 2012 |
Giles Watson wrote:
Non-native users of any language expect grammar to be prescriptive.
I'm not sore this is true. Though even if it turned out to be true that learners have been led to expect poor educational materials, that's not necessarily a good reason for continuing to churn out poor educational materials.
Giles Watson wrote:
The learner-focused grammar textbooks they and their teachers rely on lay down rules because that is what a learner needs in order to be productive in the target language.
Like others, I wonder if there's actually evidence for this need. Why can't the rules that teachers/educational materials lay down be descriptive?
Note that (with the possible exception of biology teaching in the US...) you wouldn't usually apply this logic to other disciplines. In Chemistry, the number of electrons that a given element has in its outer shell isn't usually said to depend on the number of electrons that I would *like* it to have, but rather on how many the evidence suggests that it actually has.
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 11:12
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
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| He or she for gender rights? | May 1, 2012 |
Not sure whether this was already mentioned (I haven't read all of the posts) but another aspect may be about gender rights etc. Am I right to presume that "they" is historically an older form? Then later on some groups wanted to hear both genders mentioned clearly? It's quite common in the language.
For instance over here, we have a gender based language, and even so many occupations are still used in masculine form, since in the past these jobs were only performed by men. Needles... See more Not sure whether this was already mentioned (I haven't read all of the posts) but another aspect may be about gender rights etc. Am I right to presume that "they" is historically an older form? Then later on some groups wanted to hear both genders mentioned clearly? It's quite common in the language.
For instance over here, we have a gender based language, and even so many occupations are still used in masculine form, since in the past these jobs were only performed by men. Needless to say, feminists object. Theoretically, each noun indicating a a profession has two forms, but in generalized "neutral" texts, the masculine form is used for the most part. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Phil Hand
China
Local time: 17:12
Chinese to English
| Descriptive does not mean "anything goes" | May 1, 2012 |
I think Language Log has done this point more eloquently, but here goes.
When we talk about prescriptive grammar, 99% of the time we are talking about rules which try to ban real language that real people use all the time.
"No split infinitives" is a prescriptive grammar rule.
"Don't put the verb before the subject" is not usually taught in prescriptive grammar, because no English speaker ever does this (except in poetry, perhaps).
Descriptive... See more I think Language Log has done this point more eloquently, but here goes.
When we talk about prescriptive grammar, 99% of the time we are talking about rules which try to ban real language that real people use all the time.
"No split infinitives" is a prescriptive grammar rule.
"Don't put the verb before the subject" is not usually taught in prescriptive grammar, because no English speaker ever does this (except in poetry, perhaps).
Descriptive grammar takes description as its starting point, but that does not mean it cannot make judgments about language. A descriptive grammarian would say:
English speakers often put words in the middle of infinitives, a la Star Trek.
English speakers basically never put the subject before the verb.
From both a prescriptive and a descriptive standpoint, you can generate rules about the language which are useful in the EFL classroom. There is nothing about descriptive grammar that makes it unsuitable for language teaching.
Back to the original topic:
The article Lesley linked to includes this sentence: "I have seen this carried to the point where certain child care books refer to babies only as 'she'"
This is supposed to be something bad?! What I don't get about the grumpy traditionalist side of this argument is that when it's "he", they claim it doesn't matter; when it's she, as in some baby books (I have that baby book, it's really good) or in academic language ("she" is standard in many disciplines these days), they claim it's hugely distracting. Which is it?
I find it does make a big difference. I'm not a very visual person, but I do picture the situations I read about, and having "she" as the standard pronoun makes me picture them differently. Gives me a bit of variety in my view on the world. I rather like it. ▲ Collapse
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