In Spirited Defense of the Singular “They”

It has happened. The American Dialect Society has announced that 2015’s word of the year is “they” used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. And predictably, grammarians are pushing back. Traditonalists see nothing wrong in using “he” as a generic pronoun, even though it is so obviously gender specific that we usually use it that way. Others prefer the way(s) we’ve done it for the 15 years: alternating “he” and “she” (inconsistent), “s/he” (unpronounceable), or using “she” (replacing one wrong with another). Here, I want to defend the singular “they” against some oft-heard criticisms.

About 13 years ago, I changed my mind on this issue; then, I thought that “he” was a perfectly good gender-neutral pronoun and that those who didn’t think so were just fussy. I changed my mind when I read a book wherein the author used “she” as a generic pronoun, and I noticed my annoyance at this. Why was I annoyed? On reflection, it was because “imagine that she…” didn’t feel like it included me. So, I figured that this was how many women probably feel when we say that “he.” Around that time, I happened to read linguist John McWhorter argue that there was a ready solution at hand, one we already use a lot when we speak: they. Yup, the idea of the singular “they” is not new.

The most obvious criticism is that using “they” as a singular is simply using it wrongly. I really have no sympathy with this argument. I am not a linguist, but I am curious enough to have read several works in linguistics, and I cannot find one linguist who believes that words must have unchanging definitions. Ann Curzan suggests that what makes a word “real” (and mean x) is little more than whether enough people use it a certain way to be able to use it in conversation. Dictionaries have definitions in them, but the process is circular because as we use dictionaries to see what words mean (and gauge which words are “real”), dictionaries simply reflect what words people are using.

John McWhorter analogizes language to the blob in the lava lamp, whose shape and contours shift. “Language,” writes McWhorter, “is like one of those lava lamps from the 70’s — there are no grounds for considering the clump of lava at one point in the lamp more ‘’appropriate’’ than at any other.” Other linguists analogize language to a living ecosystem, where the parts constantly change and there is no central authority (the dictionary?) that directs what the parts do.

Some are concerned that reverting to the more inclusive singular “they” is simply bowing to political correctness. I can’t speak for others, but this is not why I like the singular “they.” I use it primarily out of respect, which, I guess is sort of close to political correctness, but who can really argue against respect? Just as I wouldn’t say to a mixed-gender group that ‘great work, guys! All you guys should pat yourself on the back,” I find it jarring to refer to a hypothetical non-gendered person as “he” or “she.” And would bowing to political correctness be a bad thing? If you use “black” and “African-American” when you could have used “negro,” you are a willing participant, and that may be a good thing.

What about the “we already have solutions” argument? I speak a bit to this above, but I’ll spend a bit of time on it here. “S/he” is unpronounceable. “He or she” gets wordy. (“He or she can invest his or her money in the way he or she sees fit as long as he or she knows what his or her risk on his or her investments is.”) “She” just replaces one gender-specific term with another. And invented words like “Ze” should be a last possible resort.

The last argument I hear is about a perceived lack of clarity. If we use “they” only as plural, the reasoning goes, “they” only means one thing. But if we open up a singular definition, we never really know who is being referred to by “they.”

Really? REALLY?

Again, I am no linguist, but this just misunderstands the idea of pronouns and how we decipher what they mean. EVERY pronoun is vague. And when a person uses a pronoun, we always figure out what they meant by context clues. Okay, did you see what I did in that last sentence? I used “they” and you, the reader, probably had no trouble understanding that “they” referred to “the person using ‘they’”. (How meta!) THAT is why we will have no real difficulty knowing whether a speaker is using “they” as a plural or singular — because when they do it (see?), they will almost always provide context clues for us to use.

Take another example: “Derek tells me that he is sick.” Who does “he” refer to? Probably Derek, but we don’t know that, and we assume based on context clues. “Derek ate some bad fish and tells me that he is now sick” has a different ‘he” than “Derek watched his friend eat some bad fish and tells me that he is now sick.” Context clues and our almost unconscious use of them with pronouns is why we won’t have trouble with a dual-use “they.”

And if we are concerned about linguistic clarity, then why only when it comes to “they” meaning two things? Why not when it comes to “he” meaning two things? Anyone who really thinks a dual-use “they” will introduce vexing ambiguity into our language needs to explain why a dual-use “he” never caused any problems in understanding. And they won’t be able to.

Lastly, let’s take that “language needs to be precise” thing just a half-a-step further. If a singular “they” is wrong because “they” is generally plural, then it is only fair to say that a gender-neutral “he” is wrong because “he” generally refers to males only. To say otherwise really does seem to rest on an empty appeal to tradition: we don’t see the latter as problematic simply because we are used to “he” serving a dual function but not to “they” serving a dual function.

And that is just not how language works. Language is a decentralized process where problems get solved by words and grammars shifting over time. People gradually introduce new words and ways of speaking which either catch on or don’t, until they wind up codified in dictionaries where we wrongly get the idea that this makes them fixed.

I am unabashedly for the singular “they.” I was 13 years ago, but didn’t use it often for fear that it would be flagged as grammatically wrong far too often. I really hope I can start using it more freely, and hope you do too.