Precision in language

So, the title of my blog has to do with grammar - that's right, the "proper" use of the English language.  I learned most of my grammar from my 8th grade English teacher, Mr. Kuick; he drilled it into us.  I can't say I'm necessarily an expert at grammar, as my probable misuse of the semi-colon just proved, but I did earn the highest marks in Mr. K's class 5 out of 6 marking periods that year.  More on topic, my major pet peeve is the use of the plural pronoun "they" as though it were a singular pronoun.  It's one of those mistakes we've heard so often that it sounds correct to us.  I understand the current PC reluctance to use the gender-specific nouns "he" or "she" when referring to an unknown person, but way back when I was in school, we were taught the rule that "when gender is unknown, it is proper to use the masculine form."

The current proliferation of this abominable misuse of English pronouns seems to have sprung out of the heightened awareness of feminism during the 1970s.  English-speaking people everywhere looked for ways to get around the rules we all learned, so as not to offend the ladies among us, by concocting terms such as "he/she" or "(s)he", which became as cumbersome as constantly using "he or she" in place of the dreaded, albeit proper and simple, "he".  Admittedly these efforts looked awkward in print, and sounded even worse in speech.  Thus, for fear of offending a few feminists, we all have had to suffer the outrageous sounds of pronouns not agreeing in number with their antecedents - quite like the universally hated screech of fingernails on chalkboard.


I realize this problem of language is not new, and, really, who am I to complain?  After all, a certain W. Shakespeare even used, or misused, it, or so I am told.  Who can argue with the great one?  I have even seen this mistaken use of "they" in a Biblical context.  Although I must assume it was a modern version of the text, put there by a translator who never sat in Mr. Kuick's class.


I know I won't change the world.  I also understand that a language is not created by a set of grammar rules; rather the rules are laid out to define a language as it is spoken by a group of people at a given time.  That's part of the beauty of language - it is fluid, always evolving to meet the ever-changing needs of the people who speak it.  In other words, "the horse pulls the cart," not the other way around.  Nevertheless, I must express my disappointment at the less-than-perfect solution we as English speakers have settled upon.


When confronted with the dilemma of finding a substitute pronoun to be used in place of "he" or "she" to refer to someone whose gender, and I assume identity, is unknown to the speaker or writer, why in the English-speaking world would we decide that "we'll just refer to a whole bunch of people so no one will be offended by being mislabeled?"  Why indeed?  Especially when we already have a perfectly suitable pronoun that should satisfy everyone - one that suffers from disuse but has been designed to fill this void when we want to speak of one another in a gender-neutral way.  Of course, this pronoun is "one," along with its variant forms: one's, oneself, anyone, someone, everyone.


Yes, I know what you're thinking: "It sounds so awkwardly British, so proper and all that rubbish."  But just think about it a while, in fact give it a try.  If a person would just listen to one's own speech, one might begin to hear that what one says doesn't always make complete sense, grammatically speaking.  Now read that last sentence using the plural pronouns "they" and "their" in place of the underlined ones.  I do hope you're offended by what you hear!


Of course, I've written most of this rather "tongue-in-cheek," as I don't anticipate a great change in the linguistic tide.  But now do you see it in my title?  I am not a sloppy, innocuous "they;" I am a uniquely important and meaningful "one", and so are you!


I welcome your comments on this topic.  Indeed, that's the purpose of this Blog: to generate discussion on various topics from writers with different views and opinions so we all can be enriched, one post at a time.

Thanks for reading.