It *is* a bit much…
Geoff Pullum’s post on Language Log the other day still has me enraged. I blew up about it on Twitter, on my Facebook, and on at least one of my Tumblr accounts. His post was foolish and arrogant, and, as I said in the public comments on Language Log, “privileged garbage”.
Ben Zimmer saw my outbursts and asked if I’d like to write a rebuttal and I mentioned that I had reservations about commenting on this particular use of “singular they” because I’m not a non-binary or trans person. I’m a cis white dude, and that’s not the voice that needed to be prioritized.
Kirby Conrod had an excellent rebuttal to Pullum’s original post, speaking both on linguistic grounds and from the view of a person who may have a personal stake in the offense of Pullum’s post. Go read it.
To Conrod’s post, I’d like to add that — far beyond “singular they” and the characterization of pronouns — the heart of what Pullum is saying is not just wrong, but hurtful. The problem comes in Pullum’s second-to-last paragraph:
“I don’t want to offend anyone. But it’s a bit much to expect me to start saying things that are clearly and decisively ungrammatical according to my own internalized grammar. I’ll do my best, but it will be a real struggle.”
Let’s break this apart. I’ll put away my rage claws for just a second and try to get through why this is, at its core, a hurtful statement, a statement of privilege, and the kind of statement a public voice should avoid (but make legitimate apologies for if they do bumble into it!).
First, as a “public linguist”, Pullum should know better. His words are not going to be seen as the opening of a conversation, but as an excuse. Estimable Linguist Geoff Pullum says it’s hard to properly gender someone when they use the pronoun “they”, and if he can’t do it (as a professional linguist!), why the hell should anyone else try? If non-linguists hear that it’s going to be hard for him, a professional — possibly the only linguist people may ever hear from — then you give them permission to give up before they try, allowing your average person-on-the-street the freedom to misgender someone with the knowledge that “it’s too hard not to”. Pullum is an educator first and foremost, and he has sorely missed out on this teachable moment.
Second, Pullum’s backing statement— that “it’s a bit much to expect me to start saying things that are clearly and decisively ungrammatical according to my own internalized grammar” is just wrong. Factually, linguistically, historically, verifiably, wrong. This kind of shift is something that speakers of marginalized dialects have been doing their entire lives. It’s something we do every day, in hundreds of interactions, scores of contexts. We alter our phonology on the phone, we alter our grammar in writing and talking, we alter our pitch, our accents, the length of our sibilants at dinner with strangers. Things that are “clearly and decisively ungrammatical” in the internalized grammars of hundreds of thousands of people are negotiated everyday in moves towards an imagined standard. If I can learn to say “the paper needs grading” (which, tbh, still sounds like gibberish to me), then Pullum can learn to say “Chris has left their coat behind.” (or just “Chris left their coat behind.” GP — are you sure it’s not that weird “has” that’s throwing off your read?)
Finally, beyond actual linguistics and teachable moments, yes, I expect you, Geoff Pullum (and all the linguists reading this, too), to accept whatever use of pronouns a person wants — learn it by rote when you learn a face and name. Because I’m sick of my non-binary friends constantly feeling like they should apologize to you for your ignorance and recalcitrance. I’m tired of my trans brothers and sisters facing linguistic discrimination in those precise places where they should feel most safe in their language choices. The ability to shift linguistically isn’t easy — no one said it was. Some people are definitely more adept at dialect and code switching (/code mixing / register shift) than others. And for some, the inability to shift can mean the loss of a job, loss of friends, loss of respect, and even loss of life.
Marginalized people learn to shift their grammars everyday, in so many aspects it will boggle the mind. It should not be too much to ask that you, a goddamn professional, do this one fucking thing without complaint, clearly and decisively.
