Gender inappropriate language

Started by Injured Muffalo, May 19, 2018, 09:45:59 PM

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Injured Muffalo

Yeah, another linguistic thread. RimWorld earned them.

Many descriptions have linguistic problems. I don't know if the intention is to be gender neutral, which I suppose is an idea, but that is not the same thing as gender not existing. In this game there are genders, so it only detracts from the game when you build a story around your character and the game refers to him as "they." For example,

Elizabeth divorced me - We made a commitment and "they" just tore it up!
My rival Jonathan died - It serves "them" right!

Those statements make perfect sense (and I suspect that is why they were written that way) as long as there are no individuals in reference to them. They and them are plurals. So yes, check the gender and stop calling every individual "them." It's creepy.
A muffalo encountered a vimp near a patch of sweet vegetables. A struggle ensued. The muffalo gored the vimp with its horns. The vimp bit the muffalo with its beak. Finally, the vimp was bested, sending large chunks of its flesh in every direction. But the muffalo was injured. It shed a single tear.

jamaicancastle

For what it's worth, this is an argument you're losing with the English language - the singular "they" is seeing more and more use in both general and formal settings.

Regardless, I'm not totally sure why RW doesn't use gendered tokens here (plainly it has them, in lots of other text, and memories do contain a reference to the target pawn) - it might be something to do with the admittedly rare case that a pawn has two divorce memories, or it could have just been an oversight that then wasn't worth fixing for the one instance that it actually comes up.

cultist

#2
It's a bit quirky, but I think there are bigger issues when it comes to gender pronouns - a large amount of custom backstories don't seem to include a string that refers to gender, so they always read either he or she regardless of the pawn's actual gender. This really bothers me. I know it's slightly pointless busywork to correct it so I'm fine with them doing it last. I just really don't want to see it left like it is now.

Quote from: jamaicancastle on May 20, 2018, 02:43:09 AM
Regardless, I'm not totally sure why RW doesn't use gendered tokens here (plainly it has them, in lots of other text, and memories do contain a reference to the target pawn) - it might be something to do with the admittedly rare case that a pawn has two divorce memories, or it could have just been an oversight that then wasn't worth fixing for the one instance that it actually comes up.

Might also have been done like this to save time and/or processing power. Static text is simpler to work with than dynamic text.

Dargaron

I mean, we already have a perfectly serviceable third-person singular pronoun. Personally, I'd have preferred the use of "it" to refer to a singular human of unknown gender, as is done with everything else in the universe (when's the last time you referred to, say, your car as "them" instead of "it"?). Darn Anthropocentrism.

Serenity

Quote from: jamaicancastle on May 20, 2018, 02:43:09 AM
For what it's worth, this is an argument you're losing with the English language - the singular "they" is seeing more and more use in both general and formal settings.
It's not even new. It has existed since the middle ages.

O Negative

When referring to any person, it's perfectly appropriate to use "they", "them", and "their" for a singular subject in the English language.

Examples:
1) "I'm not going to hire someone if I don't know what they are capable of."
2) "Why would I let a stranger into my home? I don't even know them!"
3) "I'm trying to remember their name, but I can't for some reason."

There is no real linguistic problem here. It doesn't matter if the gender is known or unknown, because these pronouns are gender-neutral; so, gender existing in the game isn't a sound argument for the suggested change. It doesn't make sense to waste any amount of time or processing power on building logic around individual gender descriptions when perfectly reasonable gender-neutral pronouns exist.

Injured Muffalo

Quote from: O Negative on May 21, 2018, 03:17:54 AM
When referring to any person, it's perfectly appropriate to use "they", "them", and "their" for a singular subject in the English language.

Examples:
1) "I'm not going to hire someone if I don't know what they are capable of."
2) "Why would I let a stranger into my home? I don't even know them!"
3) "I'm trying to remember their name, but I can't for some reason."


I disagree. Of course. I think it's situationally appropriate. Obviously your examples make perfect sense. But you can't always extrapolate a rule in English.  And as far as processing goes, I believe this is trivial. The vast majority of processing time is selecting tasks and destinations. It's more like this:

1. "I'm not going to hire my dad if I don't know what they are capable of."
2. "Why would I let Vladimir Putin into my home? I don't even know them!"
3. "I'm trying to remember my niece's name, but their name isn't coming to me for some reason."

So, I'm not really equipped to tell you if the above constructions are technically correct. But they're wrong. All wrong. Don't tell me these are "perfectly appropriate."
A muffalo encountered a vimp near a patch of sweet vegetables. A struggle ensued. The muffalo gored the vimp with its horns. The vimp bit the muffalo with its beak. Finally, the vimp was bested, sending large chunks of its flesh in every direction. But the muffalo was injured. It shed a single tear.

jamaicancastle

Quote from: cultist on May 20, 2018, 06:16:33 AM
Might also have been done like this to save time and/or processing power. Static text is simpler to work with than dynamic text.
It's not really dynamic text per se - the tokens are included in a static text string (if you look in the core defs, you can see descriptions like "NAME is a such-and-such, HE does this") and then it uses substring matching to replace the tokens with the object's actual properties. It's just that social memory tooltips don't call the replacing function.

Also, the way RW structures its UI, text like this isn't even considered until and unless the cursor is hovering over that particular spot in the UI, so it wouldn't be a big deal performance-wise; it's not like it would have to cache thousands of excess descriptions or anything like that.

Serenity

#8
Quote from: Injured Muffalo on May 21, 2018, 04:49:37 PM
So, I'm not really equipped to tell you if the above constructions are technically correct. But they're wrong.
Because you are using it in cases where the gender is determinate. The purpose of the singular they is referring to people in a way that includes both men and women. And usually for some unspecified person. Not to one specific person.

So yeah, the examples you gave in the first post aren't quite correct in their usage. But not because "they" and "them" are plural.

O Negative

When I said "perfectly appropriate," I wasn't trying to imply that the use of "they", "them", of "their" is universally appropriate for any subject or syntax. I was only saying that it wasn't inherently inappropriate for a singular subject... Those pronouns aren't strictly for situations where the subject is plural.

Also...
Quote from: Injured Muffalo on May 21, 2018, 04:49:37 PM
Quote from: O Negative on May 21, 2018, 03:17:54 AM

Examples:
1) "I'm not going to hire someone if I don't know what they are capable of."
2) "Why would I let a stranger into my home? I don't even know them!"
3) "I'm trying to remember their name, but I can't for some reason."


1. "I'm not going to hire my dad if I don't know what they are capable of."
2. "Why would I let Vladimir Putin into my home? I don't even know them!"
3. "I'm trying to remember my niece's name, but their name isn't coming to me for some reason."


That's a bit of a strawman... I won't tell you "the above constructions are technically correct..." They're not even constructions I came up with! You kinda just took my examples and Frankenstein'd them with new parts and arrangments in an attempt to invalidate them. The first example you gave isn't coherent, but it's also just a completely altered version of my first example with a possessive and a gender-determinant noun.

Anyways, I've done a little bit of research on the subject, and it seems there are just a fair amount of people that don't like to see these pronouns used in singular form. Period. There's nothing I can do to change a preference, really. I understand you don't like the way it is. I just don't see anything wrong with it, and don't care to see developer time wasted on the subject.

That's all from me :-X

Injured Muffalo

Oh, not at all. Your examples are correct, that's why they are invalid. I did that because I hoped it would provide a useful analogy. They aren't your constructions; I didn't say that they were. The idea was to change as little as possible except the relevant subject. You provided completely coherent sentences which I wouldn't complain about. My topic is about RimWorld pushing the boundaries rather further than your examples go. Hence, incoherence.

But what of "gender determinance?" You know the gender of your colonists; you don't refer to them as unknown figures. You know your wife or your husband. Some names are androgynous, some are not, but they're known to you.

Quote from: Serenity on May 21, 2018, 06:35:48 PM
Quote from: Injured Muffalo on May 21, 2018, 04:49:37 PM
So, I'm not really equipped to tell you if the above constructions are technically correct. But they're wrong.
Because you are using it in cases where the gender is determinate. The purpose of the singular they is referring to people in a way that includes both men and women. And usually for some unspecified person. Not to one specific person.

So yeah, the examples you gave in the first post aren't quite correct in their usage. But not because "they" and "them" are plural.

Not #2. Vladimir could be a girl. As far as gender determinance, I like to think, with the amount of roleplaying you do in this game, you know your colonists' genders. In the context of the game with individuals you know/were married to or whatever, dump the grammatical hyperbole, it's wrong and simple to fix. :)
A muffalo encountered a vimp near a patch of sweet vegetables. A struggle ensued. The muffalo gored the vimp with its horns. The vimp bit the muffalo with its beak. Finally, the vimp was bested, sending large chunks of its flesh in every direction. But the muffalo was injured. It shed a single tear.

Alenerel

This has absolutely nothing to do with genders but with nouns themselves, plural or singular. And colonists dont have genders, they have sexes. Stop eating that SJW propaganda, please.

jamaicancastle

Quote from: Alenerel on May 23, 2018, 09:36:40 AM
This has absolutely nothing to do with genders but with nouns themselves, plural or singular. And colonists dont have genders, they have sexes. Stop eating that SJW propaganda, please.
Well, if you go back to the root, gender is a linguistic construct - a property of words - that happens, in English, to be used pretty much exclusively in conjunction with sex (in some other languages this is not so - genders of words in Spanish for instance can be fairly arbitrary). In other words, it's exactly the topic of this thread.

Also colonists have no sex (they have lovin' instead), only gender. That's literally how it's tracked in the pawn's attributes, and since of course human pawns have no sexual characteristics to speak of, that's all that matters.

cultist

Quote from: jamaicancastle on May 21, 2018, 06:05:39 PM
Quote from: cultist on May 20, 2018, 06:16:33 AM
Might also have been done like this to save time and/or processing power. Static text is simpler to work with than dynamic text.
It's not really dynamic text per se - the tokens are included in a static text string (if you look in the core defs, you can see descriptions like "NAME is a such-and-such, HE does this") and then it uses substring matching to replace the tokens with the object's actual properties. It's just that social memory tooltips don't call the replacing function.

Also, the way RW structures its UI, text like this isn't even considered until and unless the cursor is hovering over that particular spot in the UI, so it wouldn't be a big deal performance-wise; it's not like it would have to cache thousands of excess descriptions or anything like that.

You're probably right. What I meant was a block of pre-defined text vs. a block of text with interchangeable parts. I assumed the latter requires at least some processing power to track.

tmo97

"1. "I'm not going to hire my dad if I don't know what they are capable of."
2. "Why would I let Vladimir Putin into my home? I don't even know them!"
3. "I'm trying to remember my niece's name, but their name isn't coming to me for some reason.""

lmao yes. o- needs to stop wedging his pseudo-intellectualist perspective. how do i know he has one? because he ignores the point and pretends there's nothing that could possibly raise an eyebrow. that's underdog talk.

Processing power? Nonsense. Adding %He/she% to something isn't gonna make processing harder. Besides, it only needs to 'dynamise' that text the moment you open up a screen with text on it, which takes a fraction of a second, and isn't gonna lag because it needs to check once whether someone's male or female, because if that lagged, then displaying a pawn name would lag too.

It's a small effort to change "they" and "them" to him/her/his/her. Come on. World of Warcraft did it in 2007. %S is character name and %B is class %R is race.

"Well done, young %B. %Rs were always valiant allies."

See? NOT HARD