He's quoting something that's deliberately meant to mess with expectations and "prove" that using the word 'he' as a gender neutral is wrong. It's unfairly weighted to begin with. Not high literature. But that's okay, the 'he' thing still works just fine as far as grammatical correctness goes. It's just not how our brains are used to interpreting the information.
Yes, the sentence is constructed for that purpose. This is how science works. For our purposes, it's not meaningfully different from constructing a laboratory experiment. You have competing hypotheses, you gather data, and you compare the results to the possible explanations.
Sorry, missed this post earlier.
So, if you're not suggesting that the gender here is known, what is the source of the markedness in this sentence - that is, why does it seem odd?
The hypothesis is that "he" is a gender neutral pronoun, at least when used to refer to a hypothetical person or a person of unknown gender. For this to be true, people should think that there's nothing unusual about referring to a hypothetical average American who happens to be female with the pronoun "he." If this isn't true, then "he" is unlikely to be a true neutral pronoun--instead, it is a pronoun that implies that the default person is male. (Pepperjack is right about alternate hypotheses being possible, but I have yet to see any.)
I would prefer to say that the example "he's taking his breakfast and reading the newspaper" provides no useful data, since the competing hypothesis make identical predictions about the expected judgments of its grammaticality and markedness. In order for the utterance to be useful, the hypotheses under examination need to predict different judgments, so that the results can distinguish between them.
It's also consistent with the widely held belief that English is the weirdest and most self contradictory language in the world and every possible rule it has can easily be destroyed with a bit of time and effort. Seriously, yo, English is a fucked up language. Anyone arguing otherwise ain't got a clue of this shit.
I'm suggesting the the gender can be reasonably assumed- at approximately the moment the pantyhose go on. Blow drying is uncommon for men, but not unheard of. Wearing pantyhose is pretty rare.
It seems odd because you're presented with a scenario that seems to clearly indicate a man at first. The writer uses the word "he". It is assumed, as a part of English, that 'he' is used with an 'unknown or male'. The author of a given piece of work automatically knows the sex of their character.
Not hardly. Simply the part where the writer lies to the reader about metaknowledge of the story in order to evoke a surprise reaction is enough. Gender need not be an invocation at all. But the expectation is that the writer knows this is a female (probably) and deliberately lies to the audience by setting up with the word "he" when said writer knows he should use the known gender.
Got it about two seconds. Put another way, the compound shelters soldiers, both married and single, as well as their families.
Is English a second language for you? Because that, or lots of experience with language word games, are the most common reasons to get that so easily.
Oh. Well then. As a piece of fiction intended to get a reaction, it at least had merit.
I am a native English speaker. I've always had an interest in language; perhaps more relevantly (or perhaps not?), I have a bachelor's degree in linguistics.
Thank you for clarifying. That's what I'd thought you meant at first, but I couldn't be sure.
I agree with these statements, but I disagree that they apply to this example in the way I think you mean. As you say, "the average American" offers no clue as to gender; I might even go so far as to say it's ungendered. The average American is not a specific, concrete person, but rather an abstract person, and as such can have no gender.
I agree with you that in the case of a concrete individual, the reader's expectation would be that that (1) the author knows the gender of the person, and that (2) the author wants to avoid ambiguity, and the violation of the reader's expectations would be sufficient explanation for the markedness of this sentence. If the author knows the gender, then he must be using 'he' to refer to a male; it's the only option that fits.
I don't believe this is relevant to the grammatical inquiry. Either the sentence is marked, or it isn't. Reader expectations play into that, but author intentions do not.
Point. And an interesting way to look at it. I think I'll enjoy following this train of thought. Mind you, this is train of thought... don't expect everything to be cohesive.
Yeah. That isn't as marked. But also note you used the word or, not the word and. You've made the statement into a plural instead of a singular. I'm thinking of these as three people now. Which, interestingly enough, revealed a subconscious bias I didn't know I had.
When an author is setting up to deliberately mess with the readers' mental expectations, then his intentions very much matter.
Was it not "or" in the original?
Oh. It was. Fuck. I shouldn't do these thinkings when tired and running on train of thought. Usually I do a fact check reread... Either way, it *is* interesting how the word "and" completely alters the whole affair. but the whole thing is as follows.
I'm saying no to that, the cultural average suggests it's talking about someone of unknown gender. The average idea of shaving in the morning gives a male after all while putting on pantyhose gives female, blow drying his hair has a female tendency after all. Although you seem to have partially tackled this issue since then in realising they aren't all true for every hypothetical individual but rather used to increase uncertainty.
Actually your post just seems to have avoided the question of how it applies to singulars via modifying it to use plurals so the issue disappears as you're attacking the sentence and not the validity of "he" as gender neutral in that sentence. You've also failed to provide any reason why the singular they is slang other the you don't like it either, slang is perfectly capable of evolving beyond that so starting as slang is irrelevant, plenty of more modern words did the same thing, such as "gay" for instance which really isn't a slang word for homosexuals anymore and just an informal one. If everybody uses a piece of slang then that means it's no longer slang, being slang requires something being non-standard and generally context specific after all, something like the singular they or gay as homosexual are standard and unremarkable pieces of language, something like "hippie" that came out of pretty much nowhere is a word that was slang without prior meanings and quickly lost that title as it became a word, it stopped being a slang method of describing particular people and became the standard method of doing so.
Not attacking the sentence. Correcting its grammar. It's using singular to describe a plural (the plural being Americans). Either switch the whole thing to plural, or switch to describing a singular. But as it's written in that sentence, of course the gender neutral 'he' doesn't work. Neither does the other gender neutral 'it'. Neither does the gendered 'he'. Or 'she'. Or pretty much anything other than 'they', which has a plural meaning. Hehe. Pun.
Singular 'they' is a slang term. 'He' is the term that's been officially used for centuries. While it's certainly possible- even likely- for the language to evolve in some way that makes 'they' more valid and 'he' less valid, we're not talking in hypothetical futures. We're talking in 'right now'.
I did not know this. Huh. I'm guessing people don't get angry over its supposed gender bias the way some Americans do over the word 'he'?
No, it's using singular to describe a single person of indeterminate gender. It's not using it to refer to Americans, it's using it to refer to an individual American. You can turn it into a sentence about Americans but it's about a single member from that group, sure it's about someone unknown from that group but it's still not about multiple people from that group.
And "They" was used for centuries before that so that argument is useless, language never cared about people making stuff official anyway, only what people actually do. You've also yet to provide anything to demonstrate that it's slang other than your own statement that it is. When I attempt to google it I find reams of stuff on how it's a valid and correct use for the word, sure it has issues but that doesn't change the fact people have been using it that way for centuries and that nearly everybody uses it that way now.
The fact it's been used as a masculine pronoun for at least as long as English has been considered English? The fact it being used as a masculine pronoun has led to issues in policy due to gender based discrimination even in government? How even simple sentences such as "I'm marrying him" or "He paid his bills early that month" would get near everyone to assume they're talking about a male? What kind of evidence do you want? There's also stuff like this for actual studies but you'd likely consider those worthless as they're about whether the use of masculine pronouns such as "He" give a masculine bias in gender neutral usage as you seem to contend it is a masculine pronoun at all.
Dude. THAT is the fault of gender based discrimination. Don't blame the word, blame the people responsible for the discrimination. The whole "all men are created equal" thing should, by your logic, have included black men as well as whites from day one of the US Constitution. How long did it take to correct *that* particular oversight? The answer is far, far too long. Same deal here. The word is, at best, an excuse used as a justification. And you should feel ashamed of yourself for using an ugly fact of human history in a discussion like this one. You're treading in Godwin's Law territory here.
I... don't think you meant to use the word "contend" here. Since my stance has been pretty much the opposite. And I have never claimed 'he' is not a masculine pronoun. It is. But only sometimes. In the same way 'fawn' only sometimes means a young deer.
Well. The former example is clearly spoken by someone who knows his gender. I hope. I mean... how often does someone get married without knowing the gender of his spouse? I'm not saying it's impossible, but if others simply assume he'd know his spouse's gender, then they (a plural here) would be perfectly justified in that assumption.
I keep saying it's slang because it is slang. Let's visit an online dictionary.
You can't argue with TanaNari, Xilph. He does not accept logic, and cannot be reasoned with.
Alright.
I do not care, this is logic.
