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| {{pe}}Lawyers don’t like pronouns because they (pronouns, that is, not lawyers) tend to be short and idiomatic. | | {{a|drafting|{{image|Me myself I|jpg|Would the superb Ms. A.’s [[LinkedIn]] profile say “Joan Armatrading (Me/Myself/I)”? Trick question: Joan Armatrading wouldn’t ''have'' a [[LinkedIn]] profile.}}}}[[Legal eagle]]s distrust [[pronoun]]s because they (pronouns, that is, not [[legal eagle]]s) tend to be short and idiomatic. |
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| This unnecessarily lowers the bar. Much better is repeated use of the [[noun]]s to which they (the [[pronoun]]s, not the {{tag|noun}}s) might, if they were used, relate.
| | Even [[legal eagle]]s of great experience, wisdom and status struggle: witness [[Lord Justice Waller]]’s travails in {{casenote|Lloyds Bank|Independent Insurance}}. |
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| The use, or not, of pronouns doesn’t change the semantic content much less the legal freighting, but their eschewal makes any text just that little bit less penetrable to those without a direct financial incentive in the job of reading it.
| | Using them, they feel, infinitesimally lowers a bar that was put up for a reason: ''to keep [[muggle]]s out''. It is a small thing: abstention from pronouns doesn’t change the semantic content, much less its legal freighting, but it makes text just that little bit denser to those who do not have a direct financial incentive in reading it. |
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| The official excuse has something to do with imprecision: “you” and “it” can ambiguously refer to the {{tag|subject}} or {{tag|object}} of a sentence: unlike those ultra-precise Germans, we Englanders only half-heartedly [[declension|decline]] our [[pronoun]]s. For all that, the English language — complete with [[pronoun]]s — works unambiguously well in most other linguistic contexts. Besides, lawyers have their own special form of {{tag|pronoun}}: the {{tag|definition}}. | | The official excuse has something to do with imprecision: “you” and “it” may be the {{tag|subject}} ''or'' {{tag|object}} of a sentence: unlike those ultra-precise Germans, we Englanders only half-heartedly [[declension|decline]] our [[pronoun]]s. |
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| ===Pronouns and [[gender]]===
| | “[[We]],” in one of those ghastly interpersonal contracts that are set up like a conversation between friends and not the stiff passive account of a scientific experiment they should be, is [[definition|defined]] as the ''drafter'' of the contract (as opposed to “[[you]],” its recipient, but in idiomatic English, can refer to both of them together. How are we meant to know? |
| :''Fools rush in where [[libtard]]s fear to tread.'' — {{author|Alexander Pope}}
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| Much ink and no small amount of bile has been spilled on the question of gender inclusivity. Some of it speaks to a bit of softness when it comes to grammar from those she study grievances. There is a fashion towards signposting one’s preferred personal pronoun wherever the opportunity arises: business cards, email signoffs, [[LinkedIn]] profiles and so on. So, “[[Otto Büchstein]] (They/Them)”, for example.
| | But the English language, shot through as it may be with these and other ambiguities, has yet managed to hang on in the evolutionary arms race of linguistic models. It has done rather well, in fact, all things considered. ''Too'' well, some might say. |
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| The JC has no quarrel with how anyone wants to identify a gender — variety being the spice of life, the more exotic concoctions we can between us decide the better — though one does risk tripping over the inevitable conclusion that lies at the end of that road that — there should be ''no'' genders; we are all different, all individuals and the very idea of declining nouns in the first place was a ghastly mistake.<ref>The problem with atomising identity groups, to avoid those at the margins being categorised in a way that doesn't suit them, is that margins are a property of any group, however small, until it numbers one. Thus, identity politics will tend to fray at the edges.</>But that aside, there are still a few puzzling aspects about this behaviour.
| | There is an argument that [[Doubt|constructive ambiguity]] is no bad thing. Perhaps a “runniness at the edges” of one’s contractual commitments and rights might moderate one’s tendency to officiousness when policing one’s [[relationship agreement|commercial relationship]]s. Any that can encourage merchants away from the docs and towards ''calling'' the other guy has got to be a good thing. |
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| Firstly there is that [[slash]]; that [[virgule]]. As with “[[and/or]]”, “(she/her)” is an ungainly construction, and it speaks to a certain fussiness unrelated to the gender designation. Why include nominative ''and'' accusative? Are there some people for whom gender differs depending on their position in a sentence? Can one be a ''he'' when a doer, and a ''she'' when a done to? This strikes me as rather fraught if the idea is to neuter power structures implicit in language. And if so, why leave out the possessive? Shouldn’t it be “(she/her/hers)”? And actually why not allow for flexibility with dative genitives and ablatives? “(she/her/her/her/her/hers)”
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| Second, for the great majority of the population - the whole “cis-normal” part (barring academics and medics), there’s already a way of unfussily designating your gender: your title: Mr., Mrs., Ms., Miss, and Master.
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| Only Doctors have a quandary. They could fix it, if they really cared about it, by adding a title too, the same way judges do: Mr Dr Jones; Mrs Doctor Freud, and so forth.
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| Third, this pronoun angst appears directed only ''third person'' pronouns. Yet, when addressing someone, one does not use third person, except ironically, or to distance oneself from a tendentious but firmly-held opinion, as the [[JC]] often does. The ''second'' person pronoun, “you” — for the Americans, “y’all” — is perfectly gender inclusive already.<>Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby made this point well in her show ''Douglas''.<> I dare say this is how language evolved, precisely because of the difficulties one would otherwise have making polite conversation with unfamiliar individuals of an apparently, but not definitively, feminine or masculine bearing.
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| So, the “(he/him)” designation appears to stipulate how a reader should gender the subject ''when communicating with someone else''. I am going to get in trouble for saying this, readers, but that strikes me as rather ''bossy''. On the other hand, [[JC]] dreads to think what people say about (he/him) behind (he/his) back: if the worst they do is to misgender (he/him) then all is well in the world, frankly.
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| | {{pronouns and gender}} |
| {{sa}} | | {{sa}} |
| *[[Chauvinist language]] | | *[[Sexist language]] |
| | {{Ref}} |