What’s Your Pronoun?

Yesterday, my granddaughter (college senior, English/Political Science majors) texted me a reference to a podcast she thought would interest me.  The parenthetical information in sentence one is important – my granddaughter’s age, her political/social sensibilities and her language awareness.  The podcast:  Call Your Girlfriend (June 28, 2019); the subject: Pronouns.  My granddaughter and I have twenty-one years of Word Nerdiness between us. I listened to two hosts interview a woman whose mission is to teach the use of “they” as a singular pronoun as an alternative to the binary dominance of “he” and “she.” I have two years into this linguistic issue since I first met a person who asked for the pronoun “they.”  Recently an Op Ed in The New York Times, authored by a writer who introduces himself as a “cisgender Dad,” argued that gendered pronouns put people in categories they would not choose for themselves.  The writer argues that, Grammarians aside, social inclusivity demands that we un-gender our language regardless of confusion between singular and plural.

I am one of those Grammarians whom he would dismiss.  I imagine the red rivers of ink I traced connecting pronouns and antecedents on thousands of student essays.  Granted, I may lose this one, as I have bowed gracefully to defeat with “between you and I.”  Should I expect the world to know that “between” is a preposition and demands an objective pronoun (me)?  Like a knife in my heart, I will hear “they” call up a single person. The Op Ed writer does not champion the non-gendered pronoun, “one.” I can understand it is the stuff that makes one crazy to identify with one gender and endure a life where you are referred to (via pronouns) as a gender you are not   An ungendered pronoun or elimination of all pronouns seems fair.

“Practice,” my granddaughter and the podcast urged.  “Start with referring to your cat as ‘they,’ and the use will come naturally.”   Couldn’t be more true. Language changes faster than sunrise sets to dusk.  Practice makes perfect.  Besides, I am on board with the ways gender stereotypes control our thinking.  More than fifteen years have passed since my church replaced old hymnals with new ones that removed gendered pronouns, yet that change doesn’t take easily with all.  My voice raised in song, I often miss complete stanzas to an old hymn I thought I knew. All around me, I hear parishioners of my age stumble as they pray, “Our Father, our Mother . . .”  Yet gradually God has changed from the great white man I envisioned in Sunday School, until God is now a spiritual wholeness with the feminine in me.  Takes practice.

As it was, the podcast’s topic itself didn’t shock this aging English teacher.  But ah, the medium is the message, and the interviewee on the podcast, a woman likely in her 20’s and a purported pronoun expert who is writing curricula to change pronoun education, spoke every line of her talk with a lilt at the end of the sentence, as if she were asking a question rather than making a statement.  I have heard many young women do this, but I cannot recall young men doing it too.  To my aging ears, it sounds as if the speaker is begging for approval, unsure of her message, and so makes a declarative sentence into a question she can withdraw like a fishing line cast into a blackened stream. I think the tone infantilizes the speaker.  Similarly, the speaker peppered her commentary with “like” when there was no comparison intended that would call for “like.”  Both the upspeak and “like” come from Valley Girl Talk, a dialect that connotes, for me, bikini clad California girls mostly interested in what they will wear to the next beach party.  My granddaughter argues that “like” is the filler of her generation that allows the listener pause time to catch up; whereas in her grandparents’ generation is was “um.” Hmm.

I shared the podcast with a neighbor of my generation.  Like me, she wants to to catch up on what younger folks are thinking. The upspeak that annoyed me, annoyed her.   She added that she has been asked at the start of professional meetings to “introduce [herself] with preferred pronouns and feels like it is a ‘tell’ beyond [her] comfort zone.” An introduction with her name should be adequate. Now that is something I had not considered.  I connect it to an experience related by an African American friend who recently moved into an assisted living residence.  At her first visit to the dining hall, another resident asked her “What do you prefer to be called?”  My friend knew the woman was fishing for Black, Colored or Negro.  My friend replied, “I prefer Theresa.” As my friend righty assumed, no one asked the other resident whether she preferred White, Anglo or Caucasian. By announcing our pronoun, do we feel we are putting ourselves in a category; whereas, we might like to keep our gender preference to ourselves?  For whom are we declaring our pronouns?

My granddaughter continues to coach me.  Well along on writing this blog, she refers me to a Fresh Air Podcast (NPR) in which Terry Gross interviews linguists about upspeak and a related linguistic practice called vocal fry. https://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/425608745/from-upspeak-to-vocal-fry-are-we-policing-young-womens-voices  I learned that both tics are more common to speakers under forty, but are equally employed by men and women.  However, in audio media, women’s voices are much more often criticized than are men’s.  The greater range of pitch of a female voice also exaggerates tonal difference. Most surprising is the information that younger listeners do not hear the uniqueness of upspeak as do older listeners.  No doubt those under forty do not hear the preponderance of like.  Do we make value judgements here? Is the English language going to Hell in an I-Phone? The evolution of language is more than accepting new vocabulary.  It is also accepting new tones and inflections.  If we are lucky enough to converse with our grandchildren we can ride along.

By the end of dinner, our granddaughter and we agreed that language changes with our social sensitivities.  Another friend, a gay man in his 50’s, told me the Gay community used “they” back as far as the 70’s when it wasn’t safe to declare your sexual orientation.  Social sensitivity expands.   This morning, I sat comfortably with this conclusion as I rode my bike to the village store to get the Sunday paper.  The mid-twenties man behind the counter greeted me, “Hi, nice morning.”

“Yes,” I answered, and asked, “How are you today?”

“I’m well, thank-you,” he answered.  I almost dropped my six dollars for The Times.   He didn’t say, “I’m good.” He knows the question of “how” demands an adverb.  Maybe he even knows what an adverb is! Or maybe language does not change as a rapid-running creek into a stagnant pond, but rather a long, slow river, winding around like an ox-bow to the sea.

Author: Mary After Seventy

I am a retired teacher, poet, community volunteer View all posts by Mary After Seventy