Are pronouns & pronoun policing really that new?

[secular111]

I've been speculating about this recently. I watched an old episode of Upstairs Downstairs from the 1970s, set in Georgian England between 1903 and 1930. I used to watch Downton Abbey. I've also followed the sci-fi series Bridgerton, set an alternate Regency era (see Bridgerton' is an alternate universe fantasy that sci-fi fans will love).

Watching those shows it's easy-to-see that pronouns really aren't new. Indeed individuals, certainly of the upper classes expected to be addressed by the 'lower' classes in a particular and set manner, at least until the 1960s. Heaven help a parlour-maid if she addressed her mistress with the wrong pronoun, and in Dickens novels, pronoun usage is manifested as a means to ensure the lower classes know precisely who their 'betters' are.

So is insistence on pronoun usage really that new? I posit that it isn't. Whilst demanding pronouns might have declined over the last few decades, I believe the current younger generation are demanding and indeed attempting to enforce their return in an effort to distinguish between themselves and the 'lower classes'.

Ok, it might be snobbery, but it isn't really the New Snobbery that David Skelton refers-to in his book. Rather it is simply a return to an expression of entitlement that was strictly-enforced throughout British history and elsewhere in-the-past.

I doubt that those who insist that pronoun usage be enforced and if necessary policed would be grateful to see acknowledgement that they are simply echoing the classism and privileged entitlement expectation of past centuries. Nonetheless I think such people should receive recognition that they are resurrecting a past tradition that is well-documented in British history.

Pronouns? Which? How? Please give an example. I can think of no cases of specific pronouns being used in these eras which aren't sex based.

Are you sure you don't mean that certain terms of address were required (like 'ma'm')? Which isn't a pronoun. I might just have missed what you mean.

Do you mean ma'am and sir? Those are nouns.

Eh? Using pronouns in front of someone was, and remains rude.
Do you mean titles ? Which are nothing to do with pronouns.

Interesting thought, but yes, I suspect you are mixing up pronouns and honourifics?

The only time anyone questioned me re: pronouns in the 70s/80s/90s/00s was when my Nan admonished my rudeness with a pithy ‘who’s she? The cat’s mother?’

The same wasn’t true of ‘he’ of course, but I suspect that’s because a he without a name was supposed to be ‘He’ (aka God) and thus not something to be rude about.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_honorifics

Eh?

What are you talking about?

I was rather thinking of pronouns as replacing noun usage. Nonetheless it has been noted, particularly by Dr. Dennis Baron (he/him/his) from the University of Illinois, who has written on the subject, and notes how pronouns are evolving into titles, taking the place of nouns;

“The pronoun is becoming like an honorific, like a title. This is how you refer to me,”
(Tracing the history of gender-neutral pronouns)

Nouns like 'Sir' and 'Miss' that some of us were required to use at school can be regarded as pronouns (Are honorifics like "Sir" and "Miss" pronouns in English?

So I reckon there is still cause to note that the current focus on pronouns and the insistence on their usage by some, really isn't that new. In-the-past it wasn't unusual to expect that a servant or 'lower class' individual would be getting into trouble for using the wrong honorific, or noun (or in some cases, pronoun, like 'Sir or 'Miss') whilst in our modern world, the same circumstances can be seen with the perception that an incorrect pronoun has been used, or that insufficient deference hasn't been made.

I don't think you know what a pronoun is

Yabu.

"Nouns like 'Sir' and 'Miss' that some of us were required to use at school can be regarded as pronouns"

Nope. They're nouns. They were nouns in the past, and they still are.

You and Dr Dennis Baron of Illinois have a shaky grasp on grammar and don't appear to know what a pronoun is, what a noun is or honourific titles and how and why they are used.

Titles such as ‘sir’ and ‘miss’ are sometimes used as pronouns in schools:

Sir told us to make sure we were on time
Miss said we had to have homework in for tomorrow

I guess that’s the sort of thing the op is getting at.

Referring to somebody in the 3rd person doesn't mean you are using pronouns.

Substitute "Sir" for "Mr Jones" - that's not a pronoun

I do agree that the modern day pronoun police might well be employing a similar social mechanism to making the help curtsy (reinforcing superiority) but you need a better way of explaining it (as blithely mixing up nouns and pronouns and expecting everyone else to accept your newly defined version of pronouns is a bit too pot/kettle-black for my liking).

Are they pronouns in that situation or are they more akin to an abbreviation of the teachers name? So nouns?

*ahem, “teacher’s name” (I’m not going to mess up my grammar on a grammar thread)

Honorifics could be used as pronouns if they were actually replacing a pronoun

Eg Would Sir like to follow me this way
Rather than
Would you like...

But that's not what the OP is talking about

Sorry, my examples weren’t great. I was trying to use ‘sir’ or ‘miss’ in place of ‘he’ or ‘she’.

I love this comment! When even the quote makes it clear that this particular academic certainly does know. And what's more he has written a book on the subject.

I suppose title policing was a form of social control, just like pronoun policing is now. When I call my female NB friend ‘they’, I’m am going along with the fiction that she is somehow different from me, even though I know it’s not really true. Which I suppose might have been how a lot of servants felt about using titles for people they know are no better than them in no way besides the title itself.

They aren't pronouns. They just aren't.

Perhaps Dr Baron is unfamiliar with British English and failed to have his text properly vetted by an appropriate sensitivity reader?

Dr Dennis Baron is that you?

What about thee, thou, thy, thine?

You'd be in trouble for being over familiar if you 'thee''d the Mrs!