Over the past few days I've been doing a lot of thinking and talking about they/them pronouns, singular they vs. plural they, and how best to present the they/them checkbox option on the annual survey.
(Following this blog post, mainly: https://gendercensus.tumblr.com/post/651198185451175937/on-plural-they-and-plural-inclusivity)
@gendercensus Even in this thread I'm unsure whether plural they means "they referring to multiple people" or "they/.../themselves referring to any number of people"
@gendercensus I would argue that the forms including reflexive determines the pronoun set, not the number of people referenced.
@gendercensus Which would mean that of those, only "plural they" specifies a pronoun set because it has a specific reflexive. The others are just ways of using they.
@madewokherd The ways of using "they" basically boil down to the intent/meaning of the word, and words are created to convey meaning, so I would probably argue that they are the *point* of the words and the most important part! Like, in French the word for avocado and the word for lawyer are the same spelling, but they are definitely different words. :D
@gendercensus You could presumably distinguish those by context and/or pronunciation. If you used "indefinite they" as a specific person's pronouns (if that's not a contradiction to begin with), the context and pronunciation would be identical, so the pronoun set would be equivalent in usage and indistinguishable.
@madewokherd You're right, and also because it means something different to the participant I want to record it the way they would want it to be recorded, especially if they felt strongly enough about it that they typed it in even though an identical set was already available as a checkbox.
@madewokherd @gendercensus the problem is that people who study languages are very sure that indefinite they (‘could you tell whoever left their phone’ etc) is a distinct pronoun set, even though it has historically used the same reflexive as the other theys
And once you let one ‘words are identical, context is different’ in...
@Satsuma @gendercensus For purpose of expressing my pronouns, or understanding the pronouns of others, I don't care about this at all.
@madewokherd @Satsuma That makes sense, but the purpose of the word being included doesn't prevent you from being able to check the box, and it also future-proofs a little bit for in case people start wanting to specify that their pronouns are some other type of "they". Considering people enter identity words and pronouns with asterisks and numbers in, I would be 0% surprised if people started specifying indefinite they as their pronouns in the textboxes... :D
@madewokherd There are three theys:
Singular they - referring to one person, any reflexive but usually "themself", e.g. "they are a writer"
Plural they - referring to two or more people, reflexive "themselves", e.g. "they are writers"
Indefinite they - referring to an indistinct other of unknown number, any reflexive probably, e.g. "they say it's good to write what you know..."