Brought to attention
Warwick Pride Issued a Statement the other day – which is to say, it wrote a public post on Facebook. It’s quite a surprising document.
STATEMENT REGARDING EXTERNAL SPEAKER NADHIM ZAHAWI
That is, Facebook post regarding external speaker Nadhim Zahawi.
TW: Transphobia, SA, abuse, homelessness
SA = sex abuse, right? So why isn’t it either “SA, A,” or “sex abuse, abuse”? Or indeed “abuse, sex abuse” – it’s more usual to start with the general and go on to the specific.
Picky picky.
It has been brought to our attention over the past few weeks that the Warwick Conservative Association is running an external speaker event, inviting Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative Secretary of State for Education, to campus on Friday the 27th of May.
It’s very pompous, that “It has been brought to our attention” – makes it sound as if they’re so important and powerful and busy that they don’t have time to keep track of events, and as if they have armies of sycophants eager to bring things to their attention.
Towards the beginning of this academic year Nadhim Zahawi said the following regarding former Sussex University Professor Kathleen Stock, a notorious transphobe that is a signatory to the WDI (Women’s Declaration International formerly known as the WHRC) “Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights”, that published the transphobic book “Material Girls”, that is a trustee of the LGB Alliance:
What’s up with saying “that” instead of “who”? Three times? Is it deliberate, to indicate that Kathleen is a thing rather than a person? Or just illiterate?
“It was unacceptable that a scholar of her calibre should be hounded out of university. For me that was just a terrible stain on the history of that great university.”
The WDI declaration argues for the legal elimination of transgender people. Quite frankly, Kathleen Stock’s behaviour as well as the university’s reaction is the only real “stain” on Sussex University concerning this incident.
That makes it sound as if the WDI Declaration argues for genocide. It’s as malevolent as it is stupid, and that’s saying a lot.
There are about 15 more paragraphs of the usual spite and blather. I miss the good old days when lefty students campaigned for workers and women and people of color and lesbians and gay men.
This part could be true.
To be totally fair (not that I want to be; I am compelled), as a novelist, I frequently get into the same mode. When I edit, I try to change the “that” to “who” in each instance. Frequently grammar check (almost routinely, in fact) marks that in error and suggests “that”. While I am able to ignore grammar check, realizing there are extremely serious flaws in the algorithm, a lot of people do take it as gospel, which helps explain some of the oddities in my student’s writing. Some will take every suggestion grammar check makes, which leads to odd sentences indeed.
Oh, god, I didn’t even think of that. I don’t use any goddam grammar check. The nerve of these algorithms.
The text of the Declaration on Women’s Sex Based Rights may be found here. It is available as a web page and also as a pdf file. Translations into the following languages are available in pdf form: Basque, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Traditional Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Greek, Hindi, Croatian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Dutch, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Swedish, Tamil and Ukrainian.
There are two summary versions, a short one and one with more detail. Here is the shorter of these two summaries:
The Declaration was posted online in March 2019. It has received over thirty-one thousand signatures.
“That” is perfectly acceptable as a relative pronoun to refer to people. Not using it is a personal preference, but it’s got a long pedigree in English (Shakespeare and Twain used it, for example).
Some references (as far as I can tell, Language Log never talked about it):
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/that#usage-4
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/who-vs-that-guide#when-to-use-who-vs-that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_relative_clauses#Human_or_non-human_antecedents
Well, I beg to differ. It’s a matter of connotations. “That” sounds more thingy than “who” and using it for a person three times in quick succession sounds especially thingy. I don’t really care about pedigree or correctitude – it’s about style and implications and the like. It may be permissible, but “perfectly acceptable” is excessive.
As is “illiterate”.
No it isn’t. If I were editing something I would absolutely change all those “thats” to “whos.” They’re ugly and slovenly at best.
I found the use of that incredibly jarring and had the same reaction as Ophelia, that Stock was being dehumanised. Plus, all the links WaM provides support the use of that as an indirect pronoun – used to refer to an object or thing associated with a person, rather than the person. It would never have occurred to me to use it in the way we see it above, and I’d always edit it out if I saw my colleagues write that way.
I don’t know about right or wrong, but just in terms of clarity using all those “that”s is terrible writing. I had to go back through the sentence to check who or what they referred to. The declaration on women’s rights published a book? Material Girls is a trustee of the LGB Alliance? Took me right back to my school days and puzzling out Latin sentences.
Rob,
Well, no. From the Merriam Webster link:
From the Master Class article:
From Wikipedia:
I won’t argue the aesthetics of it, but I still maintain it’s a perfectly acceptable usage, and not illiterate.