13 March 2009

Uncommon Commentary #41: Some Words About Words

Contrary to the current priggishness in pursuit of gender-neutral language, there's no reason to constantly be writing or saying "his or her," "he or she," &c., when referring to a mixed crowd or to someone whose sex is unspecified. If you bother to look up "he" in a dictionary, you'll discover that it applies not only to a male, but also to (quoting the specific edition that I own) "the person; the one; anyone." (Whereas "him or her," et al., are merely cumbersome, "they," "their," or "them" is misused in this context. In a commonly-heard sentence such as "Everyone brings their pet bandicoots," "everyone" is singular, but "their," which stands for the same noun, is plural, and thus wrong.) Similarly, at the same dictionary's entry for "man," you have to go down to definition 3a before finding "an adult male human being." (Interestingly, the etymology section states that the Indo-European base of this word may be akin to the reconstructed root "men-," meaning "to think," whence such English words as "mental" and "mind"; therefore, if you insist upon using "man" only for the masculine sex, you could be literally saying that a woman is not a thinking being.) Again, as a suffix, "-man" is listed as "a combining form meaning man or person…."
English is already one of the most gender-neutral tongues that there are, which makes the mania for inclusive terminology all the more bizarre. "Political correctness" should never trump grammatical correctness.