Talk:Ironism

Hey, I'm not at all familiar with the older usage. It is said to describe different characters of a person? How can either the term "Ironist" or "Ironism" describe a character type? Grammatically, this doesn't make sense to me. I could see the term "Ironic" as describing a character trait, but I can't understand how the two terms which are the subject of this article function in this way. This article is not about "Irony" or about being "Ironic", though. I believe there's something here, I just don't get it. Could someone help me out here? Thanks!--Heyitspeter (talk) 04:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Gender-neutral pronoun use
Standard English would use the gender-neutral pronoun "he" in this instance over the gender-specific "she". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun. The use of a gender-specific pronoun "she" in place of "he" is a colloquialism common to academic writing, but rare in other settings and certainly not standard usage. Such non-standard convolutions of language are distracting. This colloquial distortion of standard English pronoun usage warrants emphasis via [sic] to indicate that these grammatical flaws are part of Rory's original language and not an error in transcription (or editorial liberties) on the part of the authors of the article. Markcornwell (talk) 05:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually there is a section on using "she" in the gender-neutral sense: Gender-neutral_pronoun.--Heyitspeter (talk) 09:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

In reference to the above post about the gendered pronouns: I find the ubiquitous usage of [sic] in this article to be as distracting as the presence of the gender specific 'she'. Couldn't we just limit [sic]'s presence to the first instance of 'she' in the text and leave the others out, though they are certainly implied? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.66.123.45 (talk) 23:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah sounds great. Also, note that if "she" is commonly used in place of "he" for gender-neutral pronouns in academic writing, then it can hardly be considered a grammatical flaw even if it's not commonly so used in non-academic writing. For example philosophers have started using the term "a priori" without italicizing. This isn't appropriate in any other discipline, even within academica, but that doesn't make it a grammatical flaw on their part. It was a conscious choice, as is the use of "she" here. (And remember that guys at this level of the social stratosphere often determine appropriate English grammar.)--Heyitspeter (talk) 03:31, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Or perhaps better yet, how about omitting "she" (along with "sic"), and using "(He)"? Nothing sexist-just less confusing.Mk5384 (talk) 05:59, 4 March 2010 (UTC) (talk) 16:56, 4 March 2010 (UTC) Perhaps not.Mk5384 (talk) 16:57, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd vote against this, personally. I can't imagine it's confusing enough to warrant rewriting the book...--Heyitspeter (talk) 06:08, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Bluntly using the pronoun "she" does a great job of rectifying millenia of hopeless and backwards sexist oppression. I'm sure Proust, Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger, Derrida, and Nabokov, aka the only examples listed in the article, would have no problem being so described. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.253.4.21 (talk) 21:37, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

And to think people criticize philosophy as useless!
All those years of pressing the random article link, and now I've finally found something that willhelp me in real life! Thanks, Richard Rorty.μηδείς (talk) 01:19, 24 July 2010 (UTC)