The president's speech

I admit I did not listen to the state of the union address last night.  I did, however, see a quote that struck me for its lack of mechanical correctness:
"Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love."

There are two striking errors here. One is the inconsistency of number -- "no American" is singular and so should not be represented by the pronoun "they." The second is the misuse the word "who" where "whom" is clearly called for.   I know that Twitter says "who to follow" rather than "whom to follow," but Twitter is not the defining authority on usage.

With a minimum of change, the corrected sentence should read: "Starting this year, no Americans will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of whom they love." 


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Comments

Yitzhak said…
"no American" is singular and so should not be represented by the pronoun "they."

Not nearly as wrong as you say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
Ariella's blog said…
Though we do tend to lapse into using T "they" as a pronoun for the third person singular in casual speech does not make it technically correct. Perhaps Chicago is more lax about these things, but it, certainly, "they" has not yet become universally acceptable as a third person singular pronoun. It is quite simple to eliminate the problem by constructing the sentence with a plural subject as I suggested. It doesn't even add a single syllable to the construction. Clearly, he wanted that statement to resonate by invoking the parallel of "country they love" with "who [sic] they love." He should have taken an extra couple of seconds to make sure that it was also grammatically correct enough to be yotze kol hadeos.
Chaim B. said…
Par for the course with Obama -- he can't even get grammar right.
Yitzhak said…
Perhaps not "universally acceptable", but many great writers have used "singular they" and similar constructions, as you will have noted if you have read the Wikipedia page I linked.
Ariella's blog said…
Yitzhak, I did read it. As I said, people do it in conversation all the time. Usually that is because people begin the sentence in the singular and then realize they would have to follow with a pronoun and do not want to say "he or she." For example, "I saw someone go digging out their car this morning." One would say that if one is not certain that the someone was male or female. In this case, there is only one person, so that putting in "people" in place of "someone" would not be accurate. A teacher may fall into this when saying, "Each student must bring their grammar book in every day." But the teacher would be better off saying "All students must bring their grammar books in every day."

However, a speech such as the state of the union should be held to a higher standard than that of casual conversation. It also is very easy to avoid the problem.

Yitzhak, I am a quiet and unassuming person, but I think it is safe to say that with my PhD in English on top of years of experience teaching and tutoring writing, I can claim at least the same level of authority as the person who wrote the Wikipedia page. In any case, if you paid close attention yourself, you would notice that it did not declare that usage 100% acceptable. Most editors would correct the sentence I quoted in the post.
Chaim B. said…
This becomes a chicken/egg question because once in the SoU, all the they/singular fans will point to the president's speech as proof that such usage is acceptable. If Shakespeare can do it, if Austen can do it, if Obama can do it, why not us? The counter-argument is easy: Shakespeare might have benefitted from an editor as well.
Yitzhak said…
If you reread my previous comment, you will note that I am not arguing from the authority of the Wikipedia page author, but from his sources, including several great writers who have used singular they. On what authority do you say that Shakespeare and Thackeray are wrong? And if the Chicago Manual of Style is ambivalent, you cannot claim that the president has made a "striking error".

Abstractly speaking, I think you're being too prescriptivist:

http://volokh.com/posts/1185226862.shtml
http://volokh.com/posts/1243057125.shtml
http://volokh.com/posts/1185300445.shtml
http://volokh.com/posts/1187964029.shtml
http://volokh.com/posts/1187887242.shtml
Ariella's blog said…
Sure I can, Yitzhak. I am not bound to say that the equivalent of a yesh omrim is tantamount to above reproach according to all. In Hebrew if you say kol echad, you would keep the number consistent as third person singular, not turn it into a they. Now in English, we've become conscious of avoiding saying he as the third person singular without signifying gender. I'm all for that. However, there are ways to write correctly and without a gendered bias without turning a they into a singular pronoun.

Now, I am a big fan of Shakespeare, who was a superb poet, but he was not governed by the conventions of English that became standardized. Spelling wasn't even standardized at the time he wrote. You can't really point to a work of literature as proof that certain usages are correct. By that token, one could write run-ons with no end and say a teacher has no right to say s/he has sentence boundary issues because Joyce wrote that way in his masterpiece.
Yitzhak said…
Nothing more to say - הרואה יראה והבוחר יבחר.
Ariella's blog said…
Yitzhak, I posted the issue at http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=41642341&gid=69017&commentID=30756045&trk=view_disc
The comment I think puts it all in a nutshell is the one by Carolyn Haley, "Like others, I use the gender-neutral singular 'they' informally but edit around it professionally." The president's speech should have been edited as a formal address.

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