So They Say

As readers of Lingua Franca know, they won big last year. First it was reported in The New York Times as a substitute for he or she for those who identify as transgender, and thus do not want to be pinned down as either he or she:

• They took up their pencil and began writing their answer.

• They got behind the wheel and drove off.

Second, and more widespread in its potential impact, a newspaper, The Washington Post, began to allow “they” (and “their” and “them”) as pronoun reference to a person of unspecified gender:

• Everyone wants their cat to succeed.

• Each person has their own way of expressing themselves.

• A ticket is required for admission. Any student will be able to get their ticket at the box office.

This approval of the expansion of they at the expense of he and she, after so many years of disapproval by so many American authorities (they don’t worry so much about it in Britain), was such a sensation that the 300-odd linguists who overflowed the meeting room last week voted “they” as the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year 2015. It was, some said, a turning point in the acceptance of the word.

And here is where I find myself backing off. Good for they, I say, but it’s hardly a turning point. It’s just another skirmish in a hundred years’ (or so) war. For it tends to happen that once one authority questions a common usage, it remains challenged ever after. The more it’s argued, the more it remains contentious.

This has happened with disapproval of sentence-ending prepositions, for example, and with prescribing fewer for countable nouns; both have been arguable since the 18th century. It’s telling that the great authority on contemporary usage, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, has required little revision since its first publication in 1989, a quarter-century ago. These things just go on and on.

And I don’t mean to say that all linguists are claiming otherwise. Lingua Franca blogger Anne Curzan calls this expansion of they a “cautious creep toward acceptability.” It’s just to say that the creeps will surely continue for decades if not centuries to come.