THE RIGHT TO SAY HE

To the Editors of the Crimson:

It was interesting to read the apologia for "he" as the generic pronoun which some linguists sent to the Crimson. Without arguing about the supposed facts involved, we present the following hypothetical: in culture R the language is such that pronouns are different according to the color of the people involved, rather than their sex. In R there are separate pronouns for brown people, black people, red people, yellow people and white people: the unmarked pronoun just happens to be the one used for white people. In addition, the colored peoples just happen to constitute an oppressed group. Now imagine that this oppressed group begins complaining about the use of the "white" pronoun "to refer to all people."' Our linguists presumably then say. "Now, now, 'there is really no cause for anxiety or pronoun envy...' You just don't understand that 'markedness is one of the fundamental principles which govern the organization of the internal economies of all human languages."' Such a reply is completely irrelevant. It isn't a question of linguistics but of how the people involved feel about how they are referred to. Virginia Vallan   Department of Psychology, MIT   Jerrold Katz   Department of Philosophy, MIT