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I happen to love the greeting yo. Not a fan of hello or howdy or hi there or how goes it, I’ll shout out a hey or a yo if given the choice any day of the week. Maybe it’s the casual sound of it that I like so much: Yo, what’s up? rolls of the tongue pretty easily for me. Or maybe it’s the two short letters Y-O. Whatever the reason, the word sits well with me.
Perhaps this is why I’ve been following the development of the pronoun yo with great interest. Popular with the YOungins down in Baltimore , in many schools it’s being used in place of he or she and is touted by some linguists as a new gender-neutral pronoun. Move over they/them, say yo to your new little cousin yo:
Yo was tuckin’ in his shirt!
Yo threw a thumbtack at me.
Yo been runnin’ the halls.
Yo put his foot up.
She ain’t really go with yo.
Yo is a clown.
Yo sucks at magic tricks.
Yo looks like a freak.
Yo is a straight clown.
Yo goin to put that chicken in his mouth.
Yo, looka that dude pants. Yo is a clown.
Now, if you’re thinking I’ve already given too much space to a trivial bit of slang, check this out: Yo has been the subject of a major paper written by Elaine M. Stotko, a linguistics expert at Johns Hopkins University (co-authored with Margaret Troyer, a Baltimore high school teacher) which, for a small fee, can be downloaded here.
I guess the question I’d like to put to all you loyal Wrappers is this: do we need a gender-neutral pronoun? Have we blurred gender roles in our society to the point where we might as well toss out the he/she pronouns altogether?
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Comments (16)
Comment
We absolutely need a gender-neutral pronoun, if only for the simple fact that it would allow for us to express ourselves more clearly.
There are times when we wish to refer to a singular person - ‘whomever may be using this tool’ or something similar - and the gender of that singular person is irrelevant to the thought being expressed. In fact, it is often the case that the gender carries with it some thought which we definitively do not wish to express; the use of a gendered pronoun implies that a certain gender may more appropriately use the tool, for example.
We get around this sometimes by using ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ or ’she’, or we use the queer ’s/he’ or ’she/he’. With the latter, we find that we cannot speak the sentence naturally; with the former, we find that we are sometimes confused because ‘they’ is more often used as a plural pronoun than as a singular.
So, we end up wishing for a genderless pronoun.
I’ve been working on a master’s degree in philosophy, over here in Scotland, and have been constantly challenged by the manner in which things are written: with the generic person not being referred to as ‘he’ but, rather, as ’she’. I spent the first several months hunting back over the paragraph, trying to figure out who ’she’ was!
In academic writing it has become the standard to refer to the generic ‘they’ as ’she’, and this is definitely not a solution to the problem; if anything, it compounds the problem, as writers twist and turn, attempting not to use ’she’ in negative examples, but only in positive examples.
YO, though? Perhaps not.
posted by DaviMack on 5-2-2008 at 5:14 am
We could stand to use a gender-neutral pronoun, though I don’t think we should eliminate the he/she altogether.
My vote is for y’all. :-)
posted by nutmeag on 5-2-2008 at 6:29 am
“Yo was tuckin’ in his shirt!”
Doesn’t the “his” negate gender neutrality? It should be “yo was tuckin’ in yo’s shirt”, true?
posted by lleachie on 5-2-2008 at 7:30 am
It would be nice to have a gender neutral pronoun, but not “Yo”. Sounds like, pardon the term, ebonics.
posted by Brian on 5-2-2008 at 7:45 am
Eventually “they” will probably become our gender-neutral indefinite pronoun since it has been informally adopted in spoken English for decades now. It’s been in written English for a long time as well–no less a luminary than Jane Austen used it semi-regularly, and even Shakespeare lends it some legitimacy with a few lines. Plus, this sort of thing has happened before (when was the last time you heard someone casually refer to you with proper singular form “thy”?)
The fact is, if we want a gender-neutral pronoun, it’s never going to be imposed from above, by some congress of grammarians. It’s going to grow out of the natural speech patterns of everyday people. “They” does the trick: it’s just up to the academics to catch up to the rest of us.
posted by Bob on 5-2-2008 at 8:25 am
We definitely need a gender-neutral pronoun in our lexicon - for two reasons:
The primary one being the already mentioned awkwardness of using “he or she”, “s/he”, or “they” when referring to a gender unknown or gender irrelevant individual.
The second reason is the rise in genderqueer, androgynous, and transsexual individuals in the world community. These individuals may not have fully decided on a gender designation for themselves or don’t care to ever do so, so picking “he” or “she” arbitrarily is not only inaccurate but impolite.
I agree with Bob, in that “they” will likely become the preferred non-gender specific singular pronoun, both in common and academic usage.
posted by Christina on 5-2-2008 at 8:40 am
To Brian above: Considering the fact that language is arbitrary and the purpose of which is to communicate, what is the purpose of excluding a word from a certain dialect (”ebonics,” as you called it) from playing a part of the evolution of our vernacular? What makes ebonics inferior to any other dialect, as long as its speakers are able to communicate with each other effectively? And why are you hesitant to allow any part of it (or even any part that “sounds like” it) to become mainstreamed?
Personally, I’m not a fan of “yo” either, but that’s pretty much because I am familiar with it as a salutation and not a pronoun. Using “yo” as a pronoun would feel as awkward to me as using “hi” or “sup” as pronouns.
There absolutely should be a gender-neutral pronoun in addition to the gendered pronoun, for the simple fact that not everyone fits the gender binary. Those people need pronouns too.
posted by T on 5-2-2008 at 9:04 am
Shesh!
That’s my pick for gender-neutral pronoun because it contains both SHE and HE, and can be accentuated according to whether who want it referred to a man or a woman - SHE-esh or sHE-sh (although that probably takes away from the purpose of being gender-neutral!;-)).
posted by Amy on 5-2-2008 at 10:23 am
Typo in previous comment
should read SHE-sh (no extra ‘e’ after dash)
posted by Amy on 5-2-2008 at 10:26 am
‘it’ is perfect gender-neutral pronoun if only it didn’t make the subject sound so un-alive.
It’s a pain to keep ‘one’s’ writing looking gender-bias-free! The ’she/he’ is unnatural to type…breaks the flow plus which gender do you put first - he/she or she/he?!!!
Time for Websters of the world to expand. Necessity is here…
posted by septer on 5-2-2008 at 10:27 am
Down here in the south, we’ve always used a gender-neutral, all-purpose pronoun: y’all. It’s also non-numerical, if that’s the correct term — it can be both singular AND plural, sometimes in the same sentence.
Yo, though, might meet the need at some future time. And if “dude” can ever be de-nouned, and de-masculinated, it’d serve quite well.
posted by buddz on 5-2-2008 at 1:47 pm
For those who know about anthropomorphism and other creatures of that type, there is already a gender neutral pronoun in place. The word “ze” is used to mean either a hermaphrodite or a a creature who’s sex is uncertain.
posted by Korin on 5-2-2008 at 1:53 pm
I’m not crazy about the way those kids are using “yo”, since in most of the examples there is no real need for neutrality. If the person that the pronoun is referring to is known, the gender of that person is known, so old fashioned “he” and “she” works fine.
But I’d love a gender neutral pronoun for sentences where the person the pronoun would be used for are not known. For instance, if I’m writing up a new policy memo for my store concerning customers in general, my employees and I don’t automatically know the gender of the customers that may be involved in the situation I’m adressing. And “he/she” or “he or she” seems so be so long and formal and serious. It has a legal vibe.
“They” rolls more naturally off the tongue, but feels more plural to me. I’ve seen “one” being used to replace “you” as well as “he” and “she”. It’s definitely singular, but like “he or she” has that same way too formal outside of a legal document or research paper feel.
A casual firmly singular pronoun would be great. I think the “ze” someone mentioned would be perfect.
posted by Melissa on 5-2-2008 at 3:45 pm
We’re definitely in need of a gender-neutral pronoun, for the previously mentioned reasons of awkwardness and gender binary. I agree that the ‘ze’ and ‘hir’ pronouns work well for this–I have an androgynous friend who wants people to use them in referring to hir. However, there are lots of other gender-neutral pronouns out there that some people use, and it would be good to establish one common set.
posted by Rosalie on 5-2-2008 at 4:06 pm
First of all, when you’re talking about colloquial language it’s not “Baltimore” it’s “Balmer”.
“They” works perfectly well and has been used that way for ages. And a slight disagreement with Buddz - the plural of “y’all” is “all y’all”.
posted by PartiallyDeflected on 5-2-2008 at 9:49 pm
I need a gender-neutral pronoun in my ESL classroom! I give instructions like “He or she will give his or her paper to his or her next teammate”, which is quite wordy. Using “they” confuses my students with singular and plural.
posted by Meg on 5-2-2008 at 11:01 pm