>>Just how much should language be expected to change in the interests of political correctness? We've touched on this a bit again in our discussions of personal pronouns and being "one of the guys". <<
It's complicated, and hard, and everyone will have different ideas.
I agree that political correctness has gone too far, but I think that it is a good thing to think a little about the assumptions behind everyday speech. That more than anything is why I would use 'their' rather than 'his' as a generic singular.
Related to this idea of assumptions behind speech, I read an article once about 'making people disappear'. It described a teacher who put up various sentences for her class (I think they were age 8 or 10 or so) and asked them to work out who the 'disappeared' people were. Sentences such as 'Every kid dreams of growing up to be a racing driver.'
Apparently the girls in the class cottoned on much more quickly than the boys, but then they were the ones being 'disappeared'.
It sounds trivial, but compare
'Every little kid dreams of being a racing car driver.'
'Every little kid dreams of being a famous dancer.'
Liberal-minded egalitarian feminist that I am, I would still be more likely to slip over the first one without a blink than the second. Even after having read the article adn thought about it logically, I wouldn't necessarily pick it up in day-to-day speech. Attitudes are unfortunately ingrained deeply.
