Legal Writing

Pronouns without gender

By Pam_Nelson

Some have long lamented that English has no gender-neutral pronoun to use in a construction such as this: Everyone needs his or her breakfast. In regular, everyday speech, we might say "their" instead of "his or her." But "everyone" is singular, so the pronoun following it should be singular."His or her" is rather clunky, though. Back in the olden days (my youth) we'd just use "his." But feminism helped us see the problem with that approach. 

This pronoun problem is arousing interest among Twitter users, according to this CNN story. Apparently, people are calling for a new gender-neutral pronoun. But, as the story notes, linguists know that language is very resistant to change in pronouns. When you go to the story, take particular note of the quotes from linguist Steven Pinker.

By the way, CNN.com has a collection of stories about language and linguistics. 

Full post as published by Triangle Grammar Guide on March 07, 2009 (boomark / email).