| 词组 | s/he, (s)he |
| 释义 | s/he, (s)he These conspicuously created forms are among the more recent proposed solutions to the problem of the missing gender-neutral (but not quite so neutral as it) third person singular pronoun in English. They will probably not be the last of these suggestions (a list of some of the older ones can be found at epicene pronouns). For the record, s/he, with its spiffy, high-tech virgule, is American; (s)he, with its dowdy, traditional parentheses, is British. Unlike most of the earlier artificial pronouns, both s/he and (s)he have appeared in otherwise relatively commonplace prose. Frequent use so far, however, does seem to be limited chiefly to specialized journals (most of them in the fields of English language and linguistics). The readers of these journals obviously do not move their lips when they read; if they did, how would they pronounce s/he and (s)he? The unpronounceability of these invented forms is a major problem for anyone who advocates their use. Here are a few of our examples for s/he and (s)he, in some of which you may detect a certain facetious-ness: • Bowing to women's lib, the Service Employes Union replaces the pronoun "he" in its new steward's manual with the term "s/he" —Wall Street Jour., 18 Dec. 1973 • Your child's slothlike work habits make it hard to determine if s/he is learning or nesting —Judy For-man, English Jour., October 1986 • ... assume that your mail will be delivered by a dumb, drunken, spaced-out, semi-illiterate substitute carrier. Can s/he figure out your address? — Benedicta, Fall 1982 • Anybody with the time, literacy and access fee these days can get together with just about any piece of specialized knowledge s/he may need —Thomas Pynchon, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 28 Oct. 1984 • ... who is willing to screw anything else on two legs provided (s)he is agreeable and above the legal age —Peter Lewis, Times Literary Supp., 4 July 1980 See also sexism 2; they, their, them 1. |
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