A fascinating Op-Ed on the early Quakers shows what a difference an awareness of history - and religion - can make. Its topic is pronouns, an issue in our time of belated recognition that the gender binary does violence to some people - perhaps all people!- and that one of the ways it does this is through language. In my classes, like many others, I start by inviting students to introduce themselves, including PGP (preferred gender pronouns) if they wish, though this on its own can cause more problems than it addresses. Maybe it would be best for all of us to refer to each other as they/them?
The article recounts the early Quakers' refusal of respect language.
The force of this protest is hard to feel as English has lost the distinction between thee/thou and you. More than lost, we have inverted it! Because of their survival in Shakespeare and King James Bible-based ceremony ("with this ring I thee wed"), thee and thou sound more special than you. But while thee/thou was familiar, you used to be the special pronoun, required for addressing one's social betters. The Quakers' refusal to use it was heard as disrespect. I suppose a contemporary analog would be calling everyone "hey you."
The article taught me some more about how much English has changed. You was plural, so the person so addressed responded in the plural, too. What we call the royal we ("we are not amused") was not an appurtenance of royalty (like the imperial 吾輩 in Japanese) but a privilege of everyone of privilege, at least in addressing their inferiors. Fascinating! I'm tempted to imagine that referring to oneself as we in such a situation must have felt like the rest of one's class had one's back: it's not just me speaking. (In fact, I suppose it was the whole Great Chain of Being.) Maybe that's how privilege works now, too.
The article contrasts the leveling of Quaker pronouns with today's push for new pronouns, an effort rather to show respect. (No attention is paid in this discussion to the differences between first, second and third person pronouns.) Noting that some hims and hers feel left out by the proliferation of new and repurposed pronouns as they don't get to choose their pronouns (can't they?), it looks to a future when everyone is they.
Now everyone can be plural! This is more a grammatical than a meta-physical thing, but what if it did come to seem more than grammatical? What if they came to refer not just to each person's unclassifiable multiplicity (I'm not thinking about the teeming hordes of the microbiome, though perhaps I should be) but indirectly to the communities of care that help each of us maintain a stable identity?
I'm not even sure that's a good idea. The current efflorescence of pronouns is also a recognition of the breadth and wealth of different human experiences, something that would be lost in an all-encompassing they. But it's fun to be freed to imagine different pronomial systems, and the different systems of sociality they might enable. We thank you all, history!
The article recounts the early Quakers' refusal of respect language.
The Quakers ... declared themselves to be, like God, “no respecter of persons.” So they thee-ed and thou-ed their fellow human beings without distinction as a form of egalitarian social protest.
The force of this protest is hard to feel as English has lost the distinction between thee/thou and you. More than lost, we have inverted it! Because of their survival in Shakespeare and King James Bible-based ceremony ("with this ring I thee wed"), thee and thou sound more special than you. But while thee/thou was familiar, you used to be the special pronoun, required for addressing one's social betters. The Quakers' refusal to use it was heard as disrespect. I suppose a contemporary analog would be calling everyone "hey you."
The article taught me some more about how much English has changed. You was plural, so the person so addressed responded in the plural, too. What we call the royal we ("we are not amused") was not an appurtenance of royalty (like the imperial 吾輩 in Japanese) but a privilege of everyone of privilege, at least in addressing their inferiors. Fascinating! I'm tempted to imagine that referring to oneself as we in such a situation must have felt like the rest of one's class had one's back: it's not just me speaking. (In fact, I suppose it was the whole Great Chain of Being.) Maybe that's how privilege works now, too.
The article contrasts the leveling of Quaker pronouns with today's push for new pronouns, an effort rather to show respect. (No attention is paid in this discussion to the differences between first, second and third person pronouns.) Noting that some hims and hers feel left out by the proliferation of new and repurposed pronouns as they don't get to choose their pronouns (can't they?), it looks to a future when everyone is they.
If the rules of grammar are indeed an obstacle to social justice, then
the singular “they” represents a path of least resistance for activists and opponents alike.
It may not be the victory that activists want. Still, it goes with the
flow of the increasing indifference with which modern English
distinguishes subjects on the basis of their social position. More
fittingly, if applied to everyone, “they” would complete the leveling-up
progress of equal dignity that “you” started centuries ago.
Now everyone can be plural! This is more a grammatical than a meta-physical thing, but what if it did come to seem more than grammatical? What if they came to refer not just to each person's unclassifiable multiplicity (I'm not thinking about the teeming hordes of the microbiome, though perhaps I should be) but indirectly to the communities of care that help each of us maintain a stable identity?
I'm not even sure that's a good idea. The current efflorescence of pronouns is also a recognition of the breadth and wealth of different human experiences, something that would be lost in an all-encompassing they. But it's fun to be freed to imagine different pronomial systems, and the different systems of sociality they might enable. We thank you all, history!
