Pondering Pronouns - Updated

I've been thinking about pronouns a lot lately. They're great. I'll illustrate why using the parable of the Cherry Pop-Tart. (For some reason, I'm not quite sure why, Jen and I jokingly never use pronouns to refer to Cherry Pop-Tarts.)

Jen has a box of Cherry Pop-Tarts in the pantry. Jen loves Cherry Pop-Tarts. She thinks Cherry Pop-Tarts are quite delicious. Cherry Pop-Tarts are one of her favorite sweet treats. I think Cherry Pop-Tarts are alright, but Cherry Pop-Tarts are not high on my list of things I want to eat. Cherry Pop-Tarts are too sweet. However, I love the edges of Cherry Pop-Tarts. The edges are the best part of Cherry Pop-Tarts.

Sounds pretty awkward, doesn't it? Pronouns shorten our prose and add variety.

I've been having pronoun trouble in my academic writing, though. English lacks a good gender-neutral third person singular pronoun. This can cause all sorts of problems when writing sentences without a gender-specific actor. It comes up in legal writing all the time. For example, if I'm writing about criminal law, I might want to state the rule of lenity. I would write: The rule of lenity states that if a criminal statute is ambiguous, the ambiguity should be resolved in favor of the defendant. So far, there are no pronoun problems. However, I might want to expand on that. I could continue by saying: Courts have declared that the rule of lenity does not always result in a not-guilty verdict. If a defendant violated even the lenient interpretation, he can be convicted. Here's where we get into problems. [1]

Some people advocate using the masculine pronoun in a gender-neutral or gender-indeterminate situation. I find this problematic because it reinforces gender stereotypes. [2] In this context, using the masculine pronoun reinforces societal beliefs about the increased criminality of men. [3] Another related option is to use the feminine pronoun as the neutral pronoun. This is a nicely subversive way to get around the issue, but in my opinion, it's merely substituting one problem for another. Reversing the genders doesn't fix it.

Some people advocate the use of the singular "they". An example would be: If Dr. Jones calls, tell them I'm not here. It seems to be catching on widely. [4] It has the advantage that it was in use back in the 1500's, so it's not unprecedented. I'll admit to sometimes using the singular "they" in my speech, but it still looks wrong to me in writing. (It sounds awkward to me in speech, too, but whatever. It's better than the alternative.) One big drawback of the singular "they" is that it can be ambiguous at times, sort of like the problem we have with the second-person pronoun "you" functioning as both a singular and a plural. [5]

Another option is to make use of our existing third-person pronouns, namely "one" and "it". These work only in limited situations. It is generally considered rude to use "it" to refer to people, so that doesn't work too well. (We end up substituting one rudeness for another.) "One" has its uses, but it can sound awkward and pretentious in some situations. I tend to use it anyway when it's not too bad, but it still is an incomplete solution. Our rule of lenity explanation would have to be re-worded like this: Courts have declared that the rule of lenity does not always result in a not-guilty verdict. One can be convicted for violating even the lenient interpretation. In this particular sentence, it's not so bad, but it can get strange-sounding rather quickly. Take, for example, One must always remember to wash one's laundry. That ends up sounding one step away from Cherry Pop-Tart land.

Another option for academic writing is to alternate pronouns. For example, in my criminal law hornbook, the author used male pronouns in odd-numbered chapters and female pronouns in even-numbered chapters. This is an acceptable option given the state of the language today, but I would still like for the language to evolve to give us a true neutral pronoun.

There is also the tried and true "he or she", and the related solution "s/he". I tend to favor this as a good intermediate step, and this is my most common written usage. Even so, when I'm running up against a word limit, several sentences containing two extra words each can add up quickly. The rule of lenity sentences would read like this: Courts have declared that the rule of lenity does not always result in a not-guilty verdict. If a defendant violated even the lenient interpretation, he or she [or s/he] can be convicted.

There have been some creative attempts to come up with neutral pronouns, but they haven't caught on outside of some academic circles. There are at least two competing sets. There is the Spivak pronoun, named for the mathematician Michael Spivak, who popularized the set. The Spivak pronoun set is used by dropping the "th" from the third-person plural. The pronouns would be e (for she/he), em (in place of him/her), eir (his/her), eirs (his/hers), eirself (himself/herself). The Spivak pronouns have the advantage of being derived from the declension of the already familiar "they". The other set is "ze". This set is popular with some feminist academics. The declension is as follows: ze, hir, hir, hirs, hirself. (An alternate declension is: ze, zir, zir, zirs, zirself.)

I'm slightly partial to the Spivak set because I think it would be easier for the average person (who doesn't blog about grammar for fun) to learn to incorporate into daily usage. However, I'll take whatever new pronoun catches on.

At least it won't be an issue for the current article I'm writing. I'm working on a paper on transnational gestational surrogacy contracts. All of the genders are self-evident, so there's no need for neutral pronouns. One nice thing about writing a paper all about pregnancy is that the surrogates and egg donors need the pronoun "she", and the sperm donors need the pronoun "he". Problem solved.

Oh, and no charge for the introduction to the rule of lenity. Now you'll have something to impress people with at cocktail parties.

Update: I'm obviously not the only person thinking about this topic. David E. Sorkin of The John Marshall School of Law published an article entitled "Sex Ed for Legal Writers", discussing the importance of using gender-neutral terms and pronouns. He recommended pretty much the same stuff I did, though he was less impressed with creating new pronouns. The article is available on SSRN. Hat tip to the Legal Writing Prof Blog.
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[1] There would be no problem if I happened to be referring to a defendant who was known to be male. However, in this context, since I'm discussing general rules, there is no specific defendant, of either gender, in mind.
[2] I'm referring to the typical situation where when someone mentions a doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc. without referring to the sex of the individual, that people tend to automatically assume that the person is male. Using the masculine pronoun as a neutral pronoun reinforces this belief.
[3] While I realize that statistics do show that more men than women are criminal defendants, it is still a sexist generalization to assume that criminality is a male phenomenon instead of a human phenomenon.
[4] Even the Chicago Manual of Style doesn't entirely disapprove. (It doesn't entirely approve, either.)
[5] I'm also in search of a second-person plural pronoun, but I'm more concerned with third-person at this point. I think the Romance languages are ahead of English in that regard. Somehow the Southern US "y'all" and the Western US "you guys" lack the certain je ne sais quoi encompassed by the French "vous".