From: baron@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Dennis Baron)
Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
Organization: University of Illinois
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 14:44:43 GMT

In article <36867@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns) writes:
>From: djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns)
>Subject: Re: Problem with 'they' (etc) as 3p singular common gender pron.
>Date: 28 Aug 92 21:59:30 GMT
>In article <1992Aug24.022447.10625@Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
>
># I'll tell you a story.  A true one.  In 1850, one state legislated
># that "he" would be used as the generic singular in all legal
># documents.  30 years later, one such document was used to exclude
># women from the law school, on the grounds that the law stated "he."
>
>British parliament passed "An Act for shortening the language used in
>acts of Parliament" in 1850, which went like this:
>
>        ... in all acts words importing the masculine gender shall be
>        deemed and taken to include females, and the singular to
>        include the plural, and the plural the singular, unless the
>        contrary as to gender and number is expressly provided.
>
>My present source [*] doesn't go into any more detail, but I seem to
>remember that the reason for this act was that a woman had claimed
>exemption from a law that had been written with a generic "he" on the
>grounds that the law applied only to men.
>
>If this is true, a reasonable explanation would be that legal English,
>under the influence of languages with grammatical gender, like French
>and Latin, had continued using generic "he" long after the common folk
>had switched over to generic "they".  Thus anyone unschooled in legal
>jargon might well assume that the law would not have specified "he" if
>it hadn't intended to exclude females, since the inclusive term "they"
>was available.
>
>This hypothesis would also explain why "they" cites have been found
>going right back to the point where English lost grammatical gender,
>but "he" also seemed alive the whole time.
>
>By the way, to those who think that "he" is the normal, pre-PC generic
>pronoun, I suggest going out into the real world and listening to the
>great masses of Americans (or other English speakers, presumably) who
>do not know about grammar rules and PC.  I think you'll find that they
>virtually always use "they" with an indefinite pronoun and with very
>generic nouns like "person", but that with specific nouns they use the
>pronoun that fits the stereotype of the category named by the noun:
>"he" for doctors, "she" for nurses, etc.
>
>The relevance of PC, of course, is that we no longer have roles neatly
>divided along gender lines.  Of the two proposals that don't involve
>making up a new word, that of extending "they" to cover noun
>antecedents seems more reasonable to me than extending "he" to the
>indefinite pronouns -- which contrary to the prescriptivists, is still
>contrary to the "genius" of the language, and leaves the bias issue
>unresolved as well.
>
>[*] I got this quote from an article by Martha Kolln in Eschholtz,
>Rosa, and Clark's _Language Awareness_.  This article was an exerpt
>from Kolln's _Understanding English Grammar.  Kolln cites Robert C.
>Pooley, _The Teaching of English Usage_, as her source.
>
>David Johns
>
>
Since this is the second reference to legal action concerning man and
woman, here goes:

According to the literary historian Charlotte Stopes (1908), 19th century
English lawyers were willing to admit _man_ as a gender-neutral term only
under conditions that were favorable to males.  Legal opinion held that "the
word `man' always includes `woman' when there is a penalty to be incurred,
and never includes `woman' when there is a privilege to be incurred" (The
sphere of "man" : In relation to that of "woman" in the Constitution.
London: T. Fisher Unwin, p. 12).  

The likelihood of "man" excluding "woman" both semantically and legally had
become so great by the mid 19th century that it was felt necessary to re-
define the word.  In 1850 the British Parliament passed the Acts of
Parliament Abbreviation Bill, designed not so much to restore women's
rights but, as its name indicates, to shorten the language of the statutes.
Sec. 4 of the bull defines the inclusiveness of various terms commonly
found in Parliamentary acts.  "Month," for example, is to mean calendar,
not lunar.  "County" is to include an towns or cities located therein.
And "man" in general is to include "woman":

"Be ut enacted, That in all Acts to be hereafter made Words importing the
Masculine Gender shall be deemed and taken to include Females, and the
Singular to include the Plural, and the Plural the Singular, unless the
contrary as to Gender or Number is expressly provided" [British Session
Papers 91850) 338.I.5]

Gender and number are here treated together, as they commonly are in 
grammars, but it is noteworthy that they are not treated in identical
fashion, for though the inclusiveness of number is reciprocal--singular
implies plural, and plural, singular--that of gender is not: the feminine
does not imply the masculine.  Eve does not speak for Adam.
	
A year later there was an attempt to repeal the act since "the wording of
Acts during the present Session was as long as on any former occasion."
But more important, according to John Stuart, who argued for repeal, the
act might inadvertently give women rights which theh should not have.
Stuart warned Parliament this would entitle women to vote and would have
the right to inherit.  Stuart asks, "Could a more monstrous absurdity be
palmed off on the House?"  The Attorney General defended the Act, noting
it was not retroactive and therefore would not accord women the vote
(he added that he would not object if it did).  The hour was late, and
several members expressed the desire to go to lunch.  So a vote on repeal
was postponed for six months; the Repeal Bill died: and the generic
masculine became law.  (See Hansard's Parliamentary Debates ser. 3 v. 117
[1851]:843)

Both the OED and Otto Jespersen noted that generic 'man' was a literary
construct; both noted that in the common language, the gender-neutral
function of man had shifted to such words as body, person, one, folk(s),
people, human being, humans.  And today, of course, the word "individual."

Note too that person, especially when modified (young person) was often
presumed to be feminine; an interesting fact in light of its use as an
alternative to generic man today.

This material is quoted and summarized from Baron, _Grammar and Gender_
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 139-40.

Dennis


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