| 词组 | he, he or she |
| 释义 | he, he or she Many handbooks, among them Scott Foresman 1981, Little, Brown 1980, 1986, Corder 1981, Irmscher 1976, Ebbitt & Ebbitt 1982, Trimmer & McCrimmon 1988, and other usage books such as Reader's Digest 1983 and Copperud 1970, 1980 have articles of varying length dealing with the problem of what third person singular pronoun to use in referring to a singular noun antecedent that can apply to either sex. Everybody says that the traditional solution has been to use he, his, him, himself, the masculine third person singular. One researcher (Julia Penelope in The English Language Today, 1985) found that the prescribing of he as the generic third person singular seems to go back no further than Lindley Murray 1795. The actual practice, however, is much older (and his did duty as a neuter before its became established), but it was not the only solution available. The use of generic he as a common-gender and common-number pronoun has lately been attacked as offensive by feminists and others. Bolinger 1980 points out that the problem was not discovered by feminists, but is an old one in the language. The lack of a common-gender and common-number pronoun has been felt since at least as far back as Middle English. The common solution has been to substitute the plural they (or them or their); even Chaucer used this dodge. We have many examples of how writers have dealt with the difficulty at they, their, them 1, at the articles dealing with pronouns at agreement, and at the separate entries for the indefinite pronouns. The use of the double pronoun he or she, him or her, his or her, is not recent either. Bolinger notes that it dates back at least to the 18th century and cites a quotation found by Otto Jespersen in a work by Henry Fielding: "the reader's heart (if he or she have any)." The double pronoun works well at times, but its frequent use leaves the writer open to two kinds of error. The first is the failure to follow through. Reader's Digest 1983 has an example: "The true measure of a human being is how he or she treats his fellow man." The other likely fault is the use of the double pronoun when the antecedent is plural. Allan Metcalf, in American Speech, Fall 1984, has this example: "... would add little or nothing to the citizens' understanding of the situation and advance his or her accomplishments." Besides susceptibility to these inconsistencies, the double pronoun has the disadvantage of awkwardness, as numerous commentators point out, especially when a context calls for it repeatedly. Many of the books mentioned above suggest and exemplify other ways of avoiding generic he. Among them are casting the sentence in the plural, addressing the reader directly in the second person, and revising to avoid the pronoun altogether. We suggest that you solve the difficulty in the way that seems most natural to you in a given situation—it is not likely you will want to use the same strategy every time for every audience. Those who find the generic he natural will keep on using it. Those who do not will search for other solutions. The lack of a common-gender third person singular pronoun has stimulated many ingenious folk over the years to invent such a form. See epicene pronouns. |
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