The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 06, 2015, 09:30:22 am ---Oi! Talk about sounding "stuffy" or pompous! (Or British. ... ;D ) "One"!
--- End quote ---
Oh, I know! That's what I meant by saying it depends on the formality of the context. Some contexts are formal enough that you can get away with it. Others are informal enough that you can use it ironically (mixing high and low diction a la David Foster Wallace). Otherwise, tread cautiously.
--- Quote ---Not me. I'm sure by now that usage has a long history, but to me it still looks too much like "do-nut," rather than "doe-nut." Unless I'm quoting, I'm stickin' with "doughnut."
--- End quote ---
I couldn't remember what AP Style -- which is what I usually use -- called for. i think they may have changed it in recent years, but I couldn't find the definitive answer in a quick google. I probably could if I had more time, but in the meantime, I'll go with this:
http://www.grammarunderground.com/policing-the-doughnuts-and-donuts.html
"Why does their preference matter so much? Well, to most people it doesn’t. You can choose either “donut” or “doughnut” as you prefer. (Personally, I feel it’s time to retire "doughnut." The way I see it, nothing is lost because "dough" was misleading anyway. They aren't made from dough. They're made from batter.)"
--- Quote ---Actually, I don't think I've ever run into that situation, but then I'm not a professional writer. I suppose the thing to do is ask what the individual prefers? (And I guess if the preference is for "they," I'd have to note that "they" is the individual's preference, even if that does sound a bit condescending.)
--- End quote ---
Yes, the thing to do at this point is to ask the individual's preference. But as more people come out as non-binary, I suspect language will reach some concensus. If "they" it is, that's fine by me.
Still, it will be grammatically challenging, at least at first. For example, let's say two people get in a car and drive away, and one is non-binary. Do you say, "Where are they going?" to refer just to the one, though it will sound like you could be referring to both. Or do you say "Where is they going?" which sounds weird to those of us who grew up matching our pronouns and verbs.
I remember when "Ms." sounded odd. Now it sounds perfectly normal; for example, my kids, the older almost 21, have always called their teachers Ms. Whatever.
I think back when Ms. was first introduced, newspapers were in some cases (probably mainly society pages) even still using "Mrs. John Smith"!!! Then newspapers went with asking individuals' preferences. Very few news outlets now use titles on second references (the NYT being the most obvious exception), except in obituaries. So it doesn't come up often, but if it did the default would be "Ms."
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on September 06, 2015, 12:17:09 pm ---Still, it will be grammatically challenging, at least at first. For example, let's say two people get in a car and drive away, and one is non-binary. Do you say, "Where are they going?" to refer just to the one, though it will sound like you could be referring to both. Or do you say "Where is they going?" which sounds weird to those of us who grew up matching our pronouns and verbs.
--- End quote ---
The plural verb would indicate that you mean both of them. If you only mean the non-binary person, use a singular verb and that person's name instead of the pronoun. ;)
But with a non-binary person, why can't you use the pronoun that matches the gender the person presents as--i.e., how the person dresses--rather than getting into the person's sexual orientation? Perhaps that's not an option in a profile, but what about in "straight" news?
--- Quote ---I think back when Ms. was first introduced, newspapers were in some cases (probably mainly society pages) even still using "Mrs. John Smith"!!! Then newspapers went with asking individuals' preferences. Very few news outlets now use titles on second references (the NYT being the most obvious exception), except in obituaries. So it doesn't come up often, but if it did the default would be "Ms."
--- End quote ---
Fortunate the obit writer whose subject had an academic or professional degree, so the subsequent reference would be to Dr. Smith, if the late Mary Smith had a Ph.D. or an M.D. or a D.D.S., or whatever, or Rev. Smith or Pastor Smith if the deceased was a Protestant minister.
Front-Ranger:
Thought I was caught in a time warp this week after reading about the Salem witch trials followed by a story about Ralph Waldo Emerson!
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on September 09, 2015, 05:46:29 pm ---Thought I was caught in a time warp this week after reading about the Salem witch trials followed by a story about Ralph Waldo Emerson!
--- End quote ---
You'd think by now everything worth saying about the Salem witch trials would have been said, but apparently not. No doubt the article was drawn from the author's new book.
When I saw the article in TNY, I remembered seeing a notice that she will be speaking in Philadelphia sometime in the near future, but I don't remember exactly when that will be. The notice was part of a list of speakers coming to the Free Library, or something like that.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 09, 2015, 07:46:08 pm ---You'd think by now everything worth saying about the Salem witch trials would have been said, but apparently not. No doubt the article was drawn from the author's new book.
--- End quote ---
I haven't read it yet, though I probably will. But I'm continually baffled by how much U.S. culture's fascination the Salem witch trials so exceeds our interest in the witch persecutions in Europe. Those went on for hundreds of years and involved the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Yet, in this country at least, you hardly ever hear anyone mention them. I'd never heard of them at all until I was an adult!
(EuroBrokies, feel free to chime in here if you have a different perspective!)
Salem's trials were a weird crazy quirk that happened long after the European persecutions had dwindled away. And I suppose part of the mystery there is, what provoked the flash of craziness?
But the European persecutions raise the same question. What provoked them? Most of the victims were women, so clearly there was a misogynistic element. Another part was the Christian church wanting to quash pagan practices. Also perhaps the increasingly professionalized -- and male -- medical industry wanted to get rid of people offering traditional herbal cures. And in part it might just have been a way to seize people's property (a practice that continues here today, when most states allow law enforcement officers to use vague and often trumped-up charges as an excuse to seize cars and other property -- as we learned in the New Yorker!).
I interviewed Mary Sharratt, an author from Minneapolis, (at first I was remembering her name as Mary Surratt, but of course that's someone completely different https://www.google.com/search?q=mary+surratt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8). Sharrat lives in England and wrote a novel based on historical records of a woman who was tried and executed as a witch near where she (Mary) lives. The woman didn't have a lot of property to seize -- she was extremely poor; essentially supported herself by begging -- but she was disliked by some powerful people and got blamed for ordinary occurrences (another woman's death by disease, for example). A few friends and family members were thrown into prison with her, and died of either execution or the miserable conditions in the prison.
What I thought was so weird was that the woman herself suspected she might be a witch, that she might have been inadvertently responsible for the death. Huh?? I asked the author why the woman would think that. She explained that of course in a culture where everybody believes in witches, that wouldn't necessarily exclude the "witches" themselves.
Today, of course, few people in industrialized countries "believe" in witches. Yet the standard cultural images of witches that linger -- pointy black hats and black clothes, brooms, warty skin, cauldrons, cats -- those are all based on the accouterments of typical old pagan women of the time. We associate them with "witches" thanks to the anti-witch propaganda issued by the church. (The Disneyized version usually omits the orgies-with-the-devil part.)
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