{"id":263486,"date":"2010-02-02T04:25:01","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T09:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2093"},"modified":"2010-02-02T04:25:01","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T09:25:01","slug":"what-he-used-to-be-and-who-they-are-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/263486","title":{"rendered":"What he used to be and who they are now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edward Wyatt (“Creators of \u2018Lost\u2019 Say the GPS Unit Is Plugged In<\/a>“, NYT 1\/28\/2010) quotes Damon Lindelof, an executive producer of Lost<\/em>, exploring the use of they<\/em> as an indefinite singular pronoun in free variation with he<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an inherent process when you\u2019re ending something to sort of be thinking about the beginning,\u201d Mr. Lindelof said. \u201cOne of the things that I think we are trying to do \u2014 all of us, the actors and the writers as well, in the sixth season \u2014 is to show the audience the before,\u201d as well as the after.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore episodes in the final season will continue to provide plenty of back story. That way viewers \u201chave some sense of, \u2018Oh, this is what he used to be and who they are now,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Mr. Lindelof added. \u201cSo you really get a sense of how far that person\u2019s come.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The show’s other executive producer, Carlton Cuse, offers a nice Hollywood expression for explanatory detail:<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously not every question\u2019s going to be answered,\u201d Mr. Cuse said. \u201cWe felt if we tried to just answer questions, it would be very pedantic. Apart from that, we also really embrace this notion that there\u2019s a fundamental sort of sense of mystery that we all have in our lives, and certainly that is a huge part of the lives of these characters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo sort of demystify that by trying to literally explain everything down to the last little sort of midi-chlorian of it all would be a mistake in our view,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n

For those of you who insist on literally explaining singular they<\/em> down to the last little sort of midi-chlorian of it all — and you know who you are –\u00a0 previous LL posts on the subject can sort of be found here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Update — Ben Sprung sent in this related observation:<\/p>\n

I was reminded of something I jotted down over the weekend. During the women’s final of the Australian Open, the chair umpire said:
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

“Ladies and gentlemen, the line judge called it out, and then corrected themselves. We will replay the point.”<\/span><\/p>\n

I thought it was interesting because rather than an attempt at gender neutrality (the line judge is clearly either male or female), it was an attempt to create a certain distance, or, perhaps, a *generalized* neutrality. As in, let’s not consider the line judge on a personal level because we wish to hold the view that line judges are completely impartial beings, for the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Using themselves<\/em> with a singular and definite antecedent is certainly striking, whatever the explanation.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edward Wyatt (“Creators of \u2018Lost\u2019 Say the GPS Unit Is Plugged In“, NYT 1\/28\/2010) quotes Damon Lindelof, an executive producer of Lost, exploring the use of they as an indefinite singular pronoun in free variation with he: \u201cThere\u2019s an inherent process when you\u2019re ending something to sort of be thinking about the beginning,\u201d Mr. Lindelof […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}