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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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Obviously it's been used in some grammatical situations as a singular third-person pronoun since forever. It's just as easy to come up with example phrases that would not sound in any way odd to a 20th-century person as it is to come up with examples from the 17th century. But its recent popularity as an all-purpose stand-in for "he" and "she" is indeed unprecedented, and even if it weren't it'd be a notable change.
But it’s not a stand in for he or she. It’s a term to address people when gender is ambiguous.
This is hundreds of years old and not just something that’s come into vogue recently.
Of course it is not that it's somehow a "stand in for he or she" inherently in current usage. It's just that it has recently replaced those other pronouns in places where for some time they had held near-universal prevalence among most users of this language.
Just as some people who've never known the old ways think those people who still aren't accustomed to it are putting on an act when they say it's weird and confusing, I suppose it would be easy for those who've lived through the change to mistakenly assume that young people are being disingenuous when they act as if there's been no change for hundreds of years and there's nothing to remark on here. If you're old enough to have seen it happen, the change in usage seems very obvious. If not, perhaps it isn't.
I think the issue is that the "new" usage of "they" is seen as different, or incorrect, when that's simply not the case. The strict usage of "they" as only a plural pronoun is not "correct." It's revisionist. Historically, "they" has been used as both a singular and plural pronoun, and it can be found in conversation and literature going back hundreds of years. At some point, we revised that they should be only plural, and that's why it feels like things are changing in our current lifetimes. We aren't changing how the word is used, we're going back to how it's been used for centuries.
Language is not a set of rules and strictures. It's fluid, and the way people use words becomes grammatically correct. If these things could not change, then language couldn't exist. You can feel uncomfortable that language has changed from what you've known, but don't hold it back, or complain about the next generation. Language will change in their lifetimes too. Overall, it's a good thing and pushes us to understand each other in the manner appropriate for the times. Right now, an easily recognizable and commonly accepted gender neutral, singular pronoun is more valuable to language than a strict usage or a new word for the use case.
"They left their bag." "They went that way." "I'll find them later."
All these examples could refer to either singular or plural cases, and maybe that confuses some people, but I think it's very simple to determine with even the barest bit of context. It's better than defaulting to "he" for any unspecified gender, as was "correct" for the last few decades, and allows for non-binary people to be referred to without needing oft-criticized neo-pronouns.
TLDR: Times change. We need to get with it.
Using "he" as the default singular 3rd-person pronoun goes back centuries, not decades. It was sexist to varying degrees, but never all that close to truly gender-neutral since modern English itself goes back only so far as times that have been pretty close to maximally sexist. But you can see it plainly in the King James Version of the Bible for example. You won't find any singular "they" there in the sort of places where its use today is novel. There are of course plenty of places where its use is not novel at all.
The late 20th-century innovation was to write out "he or she" in the many places where it seemed necessary, because we didn't have any single word that would fit. Using "they" to refer to "someone", "anyone", or other referents like that was perfectly normal as it has always been. The examples you provide are most naturally thought of in that way and would not spook the old people today. Using "they" to refer to "a student" or some other specified but unnamed individual would on the other hand often seem wrong to people just 30 years ago, but one might sometimes get away with it depending on the audience and the grammatical circumstances. Using "they" to refer to "Jason" or other such specifically known and named people in general was not done, never had been done except perhaps by the occasional poet from centuries past, and everyone would just wonder who you were talking about even if they'd been named earlier in the same sentence. Calling Jason a "she" would also seem odd, but not nearly as odd as calling them a "they"; and if what I've read is at all representative then roughly similar logic would've usually applied in centuries going back to fairly near the start of modern English.
As may still come in handy on occasion, that short-lived move towards using the hideously awkward phrase "he or she" gave many of us plenty of practice in simply avoiding all phrases that call for a gender-neutral 3rd-person pronoun. Whatever else might be said about it, being able to use "they" is certainly an improvement over that situation.
I happened to read your last reply before it was deleted, and I have to give you props for disagreeing respectfully. I don't see nuanced debates online often, and I'd much rather have a respectful discussion where we don't see eye to eye. Have a good one, you seem dope.
Ah well, sorry about that; I felt I didn't express myself well in that last one but I stand by the part where I don't think we disagree on anything too substantial basically. Thanks for the reply, see you around.
Expressed well or not, you didn't use any logical fallacies or resort to ad hominem attacks. I could disagree on every point and still enjoy the discussion just for the sake of respectful debate. Hope to run into you again.