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Re: Epicene pronoun in english?

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Sunday, March 7, 2004, 1:40
From:    And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
> I don't know whether all the epicene > pronoun fuss is due simply to prescriptivism or whether there > is genuinely a dialect difference with AmE here, such that AmE > lacks the BrE solution. (It's hard to tell, what with AmE > being so much more prescriptivist in the first place.)
I'm just curious: on what grounds are you making this assertion? Have you noticed that American students of yours are more likely to make reference to standards of language use than your British students? (This is not to say that one cannot make generalizations about cultures, but I wonder whether you have actually looked at some empirical data on this which I have not myself seen.) Besides which: it seems a little dubious to speak about "American English" and "British English" except in the broadest terms. I know that within America there certainly are people for whom "one" is completely unacceptable as an everyday epicene except in the most formal of registers, so it wouldn't surprise me is there are people who have difficulties with "them" as epicene, too. Yet for me, both are quite acceptable. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637

Replies

Joe <joe@...>
And Rosta <a.rosta@...>