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Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:07:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jeremy D. Posadas
To: Fine Users of the English Language
Subject: THEY IS SINGULAR!!!
Dear Fine Users of the English Language:
Oh my god! I feel as if the floor beneath is falling out.
In a discussing this morning among Turning House editors, H.M. Reynolds propounded what seemed to J.D. Posadas to be an absolutely preposterous idea: that the construction of "they" as a singular -- in place of contemporary "he or she" (and the like) -- is grammatically correct.
Then I consulted some key sources...
It turns out that Reynolds is in a very meaningful sense correct. See a document by the Canberra Society of Editors for a keen summary of the issue. OED seems to sanction the practice: at the very least, it acknowledges it without castigation. Fowler 2 likewise gives an underhanded approval. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Eliot, and Shaw (among others) all seem to have been comfortable with it. Even God (through God's secretaries, the translators of the KJV) uses it repeatedly. (CMS 15 simply recommends rephrase to avoid reprise.)
An unresolved issue, though, is whether there's a difference between using "they" for antecedents that are themselves singular but also plural (eg, "everyone") and using "they" for antecedents that are definitely singular (eg, "the student"). (Cf. American Heritage Dictionary note for more.)
I must contend with Reynolds' contention that this is "grammatically correct," though this is more the fault of English and not Reynolds. English is only partly an inflected language, so its syntax inheres
chiefly in word order and position (ie, SVO). In the instant case, the plural-only rule for "they" arises primarily from 19th-century attempts to impose an inflectional grammar upon a language that, indeed, owes much of its vocabulary to inflected languages. Thus, I do not believe it is proper to speak of the singular "they" as "grammatically correct," as it most certainly is not according to the understandings that generate an inflectional grammar for English in the first place.
Yet I must yield ground when the case of "thou/thee" is brought up. For as has been the case for at least three centuries, an originally plural form is now construed in all usage as both singular and plural. In this
sense, then, it is entirely within the grammatical evoluation of English itself (and not 19C imposed grammar) to use "they" as both singular and plural. Far from the charge of political correctness, this use has the sanction of English' own habits and - much more importantly - great writers across the centuries.
A helpful perspective is to be found here.
An unhelpful but rigourous treatment is to be found here.
Rather curious research results are summarized here.
I myself am now considering making this an official change for my own writing...
Disturbed yet reflective,
-jp
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UPDATE:
Since sending this email, I have been informed that
(1) no less a body than the National Council of Teachers of English has at least recognized (if not wholly endorsed) the acceptability of singular they with some audiences (thanks, TSW); and
(2) singular they has in the past decades become acceptable usage in both written and spoken British English in across audiences (academic, professional, vernacular) (thanks, FXB).
Curioser and curioser...
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