5 ms·

It's kind of odd, because people seem to accept singular "they" for strangers, but not once there's a name. If I say: "I bumped into a stranger on the street a

It's kind of odd, because people seem to accept singular "they" for strangers, but not once there's a name. If I say: "I bumped into a stranger on the street and trod on their toes, apologised to them, and they apologised to me" - generally (in normal spoken conversation, not here when we're paying attention) people don't care. Using singular "they" for strangers is pretty common, and hundreds and hundreds of years old. The problem comes when we give someone a name. If I say: "I bumped into Julie on the street and trod on their toes, apologised to them, and they apologised to me", people might think it sounds odd (if they're not used to it). It's as if we have an order/hierarchy in which we expect to learn information about people. Like, by the time we know someone's name, we assume we should already have been told their gender, and we confused if hasn't happened yet.

keiferski 7y ago
I would say it’s more that “they” is used for individuals when the subject is specified previously in the sentence or conversation. In your example sentence, “the stranger” clarifies this. If the sentence were simply “They bumped into me on the street.” it is unclear if the subject is singular or plural.
- signalsmith 7y ago
  In my second example, I used "Julie" instead of "a stranger". The subject is specified in exactly the same way, but people might find "they" more surprising in that case. Some people might even take it as a potential clue that Julie could be non-binary, because of how much we expect gender-matched pronouns at that point. (Not saying they should, just that they might.)
  - keiferski 7y ago
    Ah yes, my bad, you are correct. I meant to say that it's not simply that the distinction is between "named individual" and "stranger" but is more complex. It seems like "they" is used 'correctly' for a singular subject when the subject has been previously referred to, but hasn't been given a proper name. But I'm sure a linguist has studied this in further detail.
weberc2 7y ago
This shouldn’t surprise you. Most people can infer gender from visual appearance alone with well over 99.99% accuracy without being explicitly told. If you know their name and other gendered indicators, it would be a marked anomaly NOT to know their gender.
- signalsmith 7y ago
  I can also guess people's height to within an inch or two, but I can still have an abstract conversation about a friend-of-a-friend I've never met, without expecting to be (constantly!) told how tall they are unless it's relevant to the story. So in terms of the order we learn things about people we've never met (when it's not directly relevant), we expect gender much earlier than many other attributes. It mostly reflects our values as a society, as language often does, but that's kind of my point.
  - weberc2 7y ago
    I misunderstood your point. I thought you found it remarkable that we expected to be able to discern gender quite quickly. In any case, I don’t know how much our gendered language indicates our values as a society, probably that gender is just information-dense (lots of behavior correlates strongly with gender) such that many languages evolved gender as a utility (and indeed English actually lost much of its grammatical gender though probably not because the density of information was lower in English-speaking societies, but rather due to massive influxes of non-native speakers which had a broader simplifying effect on the language).
  - GhostVII 7y ago
    But gender has a much more significant affect on how someone acts than their height, and significantly affects what kind of relationship you could have with that person.
    - geofft 7y ago
      That makes it relevant for stories like "I met him at a bar and we shared a few drinks," but not "I sold her a cup of coffee this morning" or "She's interviewing for our team." Gender is also kind of a useless differentiator in many contexts because of the way that gender correlates with behavior: if there's a group of mothers or Catholic priests or even schoolteachers or venture capitalists, I'm much more likely to find pronouns for short/tall useful than for male/female in communicating about specific members of that group.

keiferski 7y ago

I would say it’s more that “they” is used for individuals when the subject is specified previously in the sentence or conversation. In your example sentence, “the stranger” clarifies this. If the sentence were simply “They bumped into me on the street.” it is unclear if the subject is singular or plural.

signalsmith 7y ago
In my second example, I used "Julie" instead of "a stranger". The subject is specified in exactly the same way, but people might find "they" more surprising in that case. Some people might even take it as a potential clue that Julie could be non-binary, because of how much we expect gender-matched pronouns at that point. (Not saying they should, just that they might.)
- keiferski 7y ago
  Ah yes, my bad, you are correct. I meant to say that it's not simply that the distinction is between "named individual" and "stranger" but is more complex. It seems like "they" is used 'correctly' for a singular subject when the subject has been previously referred to, but hasn't been given a proper name. But I'm sure a linguist has studied this in further detail.

weberc2 7y ago

This shouldn’t surprise you. Most people can infer gender from visual appearance alone with well over 99.99% accuracy without being explicitly told. If you know their name and other gendered indicators, it would be a marked anomaly NOT to know their gender.

signalsmith 7y ago
I can also guess people's height to within an inch or two, but I can still have an abstract conversation about a friend-of-a-friend I've never met, without expecting to be (constantly!) told how tall they are unless it's relevant to the story. So in terms of the order we learn things about people we've never met (when it's not directly relevant), we expect gender much earlier than many other attributes. It mostly reflects our values as a society, as language often does, but that's kind of my point.
- weberc2 7y ago
  I misunderstood your point. I thought you found it remarkable that we expected to be able to discern gender quite quickly. In any case, I don’t know how much our gendered language indicates our values as a society, probably that gender is just information-dense (lots of behavior correlates strongly with gender) such that many languages evolved gender as a utility (and indeed English actually lost much of its grammatical gender though probably not because the density of information was lower in English-speaking societies, but rather due to massive influxes of non-native speakers which had a broader simplifying effect on the language).
- GhostVII 7y ago
  But gender has a much more significant affect on how someone acts than their height, and significantly affects what kind of relationship you could have with that person.
  - geofft 7y ago
    That makes it relevant for stories like "I met him at a bar and we shared a few drinks," but not "I sold her a cup of coffee this morning" or "She's interviewing for our team." Gender is also kind of a useless differentiator in many contexts because of the way that gender correlates with behavior: if there's a group of mothers or Catholic priests or even schoolteachers or venture capitalists, I'm much more likely to find pronouns for short/tall useful than for male/female in communicating about specific members of that group.