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Re: communicating



I'm not being flippant in my comment. I am a lover of the language and an
opponent of efforts to make it less useful. The original form was this:

Unless the sender gets back something by which
to judge the quality of the communication, the sender is acting in a way
that satisfies themselves but have little to do with what they want
communicated.

Dewey suggests this interpretation:

Here's how I read it:
change "themselves" to: herself or himself (alternative: the sender)
change "have" to: has
change "they" to: she or he (alternative: the sender)
change "want" to: wants

With my translation the sentence would read:

Unless the sender gets back something by which to judge the quality
of the communication, she is acting in a way that satisfies her but
has little to do with what she wants communicated.

Now, all you PC types out there, be honest. Which sounds better, Dewey's
reconstruction (which is nearly the same as my own, except that I very
much prefer the use of pronouns of either gender) or the original? Is not
the (arguably superior) aesthetic quality of the more nearly Standard
English version of some considerable value in conveying meaning? I find
the original form not only ugly, but also confusing. It is less so for
being written, but if that sentence had been spoken in a lecture I, for
one, would have been derailed. I think the original author had great
difficulty in constructing it, and I think he knows how to say it the way
I did.

I teach in Standard English. To me it sounds better, but I also believe it
sounds better than Newspeak to my students, and I think it conveys meaning
better. Those among you who agree but think the battle is over are wrong.
It's not over until everyone on our side gives up. It will be a shame
indeed when Mark Twain is condemned for his "noninclusive" language and,
perhaps, reprinted in "Reformed English" for use in our schools. That is
what I believe will happen if this ugly trend is allowed to continue
unopposed.

Leigh