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."
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
Not nearly as wrong as you say:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
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.
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
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.
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.