Re: Pronouns & sexualit

2009/2/25 Sai Emrys <saizai@...>:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Paul Kershaw <ptkershaw@...> wrote:
>> I'm neither conservative nor Christian, and if I were to truly get into the
>> intricacies of my opinion we may well inspire a "no crown no cross" addendum,
>> but suffice to say I'm not particularly on board on either perspective but
>> closer to thinking of it as an activity which people ought to have the right
>> to do. :)
>
> I tried to be clear about staying on the cognitive linguistics side of
> NCNC. It's IMO an interesting topic in its own right, of which the
> homosexuality debate is just one instance.
Another issue is how this semantic content gets into pronouns. What
social structures have to be in place and how long to get a pronoun
reserved for, let's say, left-handed blonde people? Or cross-eyed
cross-dressers? How do pronouns come into being?

If you have a strongly delimited social class with a standard way of
referring to them that is not a pronoun, you might end up with a way
of addressing them ("Your Elbowness", let's say) that becomes
widespread. Eventually, that could be reduced to something simple and
short, and semantic drift might cause you to refer to especially
effeminate men, or people with any eye problem, as "elbow": "That was
a great party last night, elbow!"

This seems reasonable to me, but it requires a distinct social group,
and probably a level of formality for interactions between members of
that social group and people outside the group.

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