Singular "they"

[robinturner]

[Apologies if I have posted on this topic before.]

I am normally a great fan of the Chicago Manual of Style, especially their regular Q&A series. However, I have to take issue with the following.

Q. In reading a marketing piece written by a co-worker, I thought that the following sentence contained a possessive pronoun that disagrees in number with its antecedent: “We tailor each client’s portfolio to meet their investment objectives.” Personally, I think “their” should be “his,” “his/her,” or “its” because “each client” is singular. Another approach, in my opinion, would be to make the entire sentence plural, i.e., “We tailor our clients’ portfolios to meet their investment objectives.” However, that construction loses some of the connotation that each portfolio is individually constructed for each client. Please help!

A. Although your colleagues are using bad grammar, that construction is very popular and tough to fight. The use of “their” replaced the use of “his” as the latter pronoun came to be considered sexist. “His or her” can get annoying if used frequently. It’s a problem that no one has figured out how to solve elegantly. Writers of lengthy books or articles can use “his” in some passages and “her” in others. That’s not an option if you are writing a short document or a slogan, but rephrasing (often by changing the subject to a plural) is almost always possible. Since you don’t want a plural subject, you could say, “We tailor each portfolio to meet the client’s investment objectives.”

It is true that the use of "their" as a substitute for "his" has become more popular in recent years, but in fact it has always been around, along with the use of "they" to mean "he or she". Henry Churchyard has written an informative page on the use of the singular "they" by Jane Austen, including the following quotations:

"Who is in love with her? Who makes you their confidant?"
"but it is not every body who will bestow praise where they may."
"[Mr. Woodhouse] was happily placed, quite at his ease, ready to talk with pleasure of what had been achieved, and advise every body to come and sit down, and not to heat themselves."
"there is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry."

I remind the gentle reader that this is Jane Austen, a woman who is practically worshipped in English departments around the world, and whose very punctuation sends thrills of delight up the spines of professors. Edward Said fell from grace in Britain not because of his scathing criticisms of orientalism and British imperialism, but because he had the gall to make some disparaging remarks about her. As one writer at the time said, "Touch Jane Austen and you're toast."

So if it's good enough for Jane Austen (along with Shakespeare, Fielding, Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, Byron, Thackeray, Ruskin and Lewis Carroll) why isn't it good enough for the CMS? An obvious rejoinder would be that Austen's work also contains many examples of usage that was normal around 1800 but odd now (spelling "everybody" as "every body", for example). After all, if historical precedent were enough, it would still be alright to put "-eth" on  the end of verbs. However, the initial complaint was that it was a well-intentioned but ungrammatical neologism, pointing to a situation with some people (including the majestic Austen) using it in the past, and some people using it now. Whatever the problem may be with plural "they", it is obviously not that it is an archaism.

The other objection comes from prescriptive grammar: "they" is plural, and that's the end of the story. However, prescriptive grammar has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is descriptive grammar; specifically a description of the grammar of those speakers and writers whose grammar you wish others to emulate. There is nothing sinister here: I teach prescriptive grammar to my students, based on  the usage of academic journals. You want to write like an academic, this is how you do it. (Note that if you really do want to write like an academic, the syntax of that last sentence is not to be emulated.) This brings us back to the Jane Austen defence. While it is true that singular "they" was rejected even by some of Austen's contemporaries (Coleridge, for example, who preferred "it"), anyone who stood up, pounded the lectern, and boomed "That Austen woman does not know the rules of English grammar!" would sound like a complete twit. One might go further and propose that English plural pronouns are not exactly plural; they are non-specific, which is why monarchs and doctors can refer to themselves as "we".

So for what it's worth, my recommendation is that everyone should use whichever pronoun they prefer.

Comments

[vret.livejournal.com]

In that example client is usually plural, anyway. It's similar to "This band can all play their instruments".

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

Hey, I just had that same argument with my mom over Christmas, when she made a snarky remark about an ad that said "Every great chef wears their passion on their sleeve" and she argued it should be "his or her passion on his or her sleeve", which I thought was ridiculous... Can I quote you?

[solri.livejournal.com]

I'd be honoured. Quotation is the sincerest form of flattery ;-)

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

Done. You may well become a meme... ;)

[vret.livejournal.com]

I've seen hir used in print, in a Timothy Leary book.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Me too, though I was never sure how to pronounce it. Is it like "here"? In Shropshire some people stil use "er" as a non-gender-specific pronoun. There again, in those parts of Shropshire, pretty much everything they say sounds like "er".

Pronouns are highly resistant to the normal processes of linguistic change. You can lose them (like "thou") but introducing a new one is very hard. The only one I can think of offhand is the Spanish "usted", which was a corruption of "your mercies". I also suspect that the Chinese "nin" arose as a contraction of "nimen" (you-plural). However, introducing a new pronoun that offers less information than the old ones goes against the grain; when pronouns get less specific, it seems to be as a result of one pronoun taking over the function of an existing one (as with "you" and "thou").

[solri.livejournal.com]

Shudder indeed. I don't mind it when people use "me" when official grammar demands "I" (e.g. "It's me"), but doing it the other way round is inexcusable - it's like those awful people who use "whom" in the nominative case. If you're going to be pretentious, then get it right.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Pretty much the only time I use "whom" is after a preposition, since "who" sounds so awful there. For example, I'd say "Who are you referring to?" but "To whom are you referring?" It's not terribly consistent, but it seems to be normal usage.

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read Straight Man by Richard Russo? It's a very funny novel set in the English department of a third-rate American state university. One of the professors in the department, who is a total SNAG (Sensitive New Age Guy) is only called "Orshe." Because any time someone else says "If a student feels he...", the SNAG jumps in immediately and loudly with "Or she!"

[solri.livejournal.com]

I've not heard of Russo, but he sounds right up my street. I went through a phase of reading campus novels by the likes of Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge. It's incestuous but fun.