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this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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People who were/are upset about singular they really don't understand that language change is pervasive and unstoppable. Shifts in pronoun agreement are no different.
Prescriptive grammarians cling to their (arbitrary) rules because they believe in a "pure" form of the language. That itself is a misunderstanding and just mirrors other common things some people do to divide the masses. Do not listen to such people.
As someone deeply engrained in the field of Linguistics for decades (personally, academically, and professionally), I can tell you that one of the biggest challenges in teaching people how language actually works is breaking down the preconceived notions they have about such things -- the exact notions those prescriptivists tout.
Thomas Ellwood, ca. late 1600s.
This kind of thinking is exactly what is meant by "prescriptive grammar". It is, in many ways, not even grammar, at least not in the scientific sense.
Amusingly enough, modern day prescriptivists would now probably flag Mr. Ellwood for a run-on sentence.
What do you mean by this, exactly? As someone who is deeply "engrained" (?) in the field of linguistics, surely you must be aware that singular "they" has been in usage since the 14th century.
It has been in usage a long time -- and yet, it is still considered "improper" English by many a grammarian (though improper English is as nonexistent as Standard American English).
In the 18th century, there was a push away from singular they on the basis that it did not fit within the logic of the agreement paradigm as some understood it. Most (if not all) rules suggesting it is poor usage derive from this thinking.
But this is exactly the problem: the fact that singular they arose naturally is the point. If it does not fit within one's understanding of the agreement paradigm, then that understanding is wrong. That is the key difference between prescriptivism and descriptivism, at least in the way those are often discussed in Linguistics.
If those grammarians cared about grammar as much as they claimed, they would be seeking to better describe it and not trying to change the way that others use it. When I say that they don't understand "language change is pervasive and unstoppable", I mean that prescriptivism is naturally conservative in suggesting that one should not deviate from some particular usage; that isn't how language works.
PS- I assume your quoting is to suggest "ingrained", but I'd argue that ingrained and engrained both work in this context. Even if we disagree there, spelling isn't really about language either -- simply one possible representation of it. Given that the purpose of language is information transfer, if I had put "ngrayned" above and you had gotten my meaning, then it would have served its purpose.