Word: pronouns
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...that therapists of his age (44) can entirely overcome the effects of their rearing in a male-oriented society. "My generation won't make it," he admits. All the same, alerted by his wife, daughters and patients to minor signs of his own bias (habitual use of the pronoun he instead of she, for instance), Zimmerman reports that he has brought about some "moderately profound changes" in himself...
...Nixon showed great vigor, a great ability, even in picking me," Kissinger is quoted as saying, apparently in all seriousness; of course he was quite right, but perhaps he should not have been the one to say it. In an interview that fairly bristles with the first person singular pronoun, Kissinger revealed that he loved "acting alone" in his diplomacy: "The Americans love the cowboy who comes into town all alone on his horse, and nothing else. He acts and that is enough, being in the right place at the right time, in sum a western. This romantic and surprising...
Frequently when Black English sounds ungrammatical to white ears, it is merely conforming to its own rules. Thus, in the demonstrator's placard, the pronoun themself leaves off the standard English -ves ending because them already establishes plurality. Since Black English rarely uses suffixes, neat means the same as the Standard English noun neatness. Black English also does not differentiate between genders of pronouns, so it is perfectly correct for a speaker to say, "He a nice little girl." In unraveling these rules, however, linguists encounter a problem-almost nobody speaks "pure" Black English. Ghetto blacks, hearing their speech...
...masculine singular pronoun when the subject is not necessarily male, for example, is considered to be blatantly sexist. Henry James' "We must grant the artist his subject, his idea ..." sounds as if the artist were always a man. Thus a search is under way for a set of sexless singular pronouns. A Women's Liberation lexicographer who styles herself Varda One has come up with ve, vis and ver. Others have suggested singularizing they, their and them to te, ter and tern. Someone has invented co, cos, co, which takes a pleasant form in the coself construction...
...recent letters in the Crimson to using she to refer to God is not that God is not female, for He is neither male nor female as well as male and female, but that as the English language now stands, she must mean a female whereas he (the unmarked pronoun) need not mean a male but can mean a person whose sex is unknown. English lacks neutral animate pronouns. Languages change: if he offends, then we must change English so that she can refer to both sexes as well as especially to the female, or we must get another neutral...