Marine Vocabulary Lesson

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine who is in the Marines. I was joking about how I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time when he uses their lingo/slang- and then I remembered this class and realized, hey, I can use that! So I got him to define a few terms for me, and now I will share them with you: slang apparently used by Marines, as informally defined for me by my friend Mark.

1. Grunt: “Ground Unit Not Trained,” or “musclehead” infantrymen.
2. POG: “Person Other than Grunt.” An insulting term which implies you aren’t a “real” Marine if you aren’t infantry.
3. Blue Falcon: That one guy that screws everyone else over; someone who really needs to get their act together.
4. Boot: Someone fresh out of boot camp, especially one who flaunts the fact that they’re a Marine now and gives you secondhand embarrassment.
5. Skate: A verb; to get the easiest job where you have to do minimal work.
6. Barney style: Instructions given in words even a toddler could understand.
7. Terminal lance: I quote, “the many, many lance corporals who have given up on life, and are just waiting out the rest of their enlistment in agony so they can get out.”
8. Ninja punch: NJP, Non-Judicial Punishment. Mark says this is his favorite term, and is basically criminal charges without a trial and with its own punishment system, used when someone does something stupid but not warranting an actual trial.

Anyone else never heard of most of these before? Or, alternatively, have others to share?

"He" to "he/she" to "they" to...?

One of the passages that interested me in our textbook was the section on the gradual shift away from using masculine words as generic forms. For a long time, it was commonly accepted practice to use “man” as synonymous with “humankind,” to use the pronoun “he” by default when referring to an unknown individual, and so on. This only changed around the 1970s, prompted by the second wave of feminism. Generic “he,” and considering men the default in general, started to fall out of favor. Today, the generic “he” seems old-fashioned, and it’s more common to see “he or she,” “he/she,” “(s)he” or some other variation on including both male and female pronouns. Another option, which I haven’t seen as frequently, is to alternate the pronouns used for the unknown or hypothetical person every time you start a new sentence.

Even more recently, though, singular “they” has been making a comeback- probably helped along by many people (including myself!) using it as a personal pronoun. The advantages of “they” in place of “he/she” are greater inclusivity, eliminating the need for one pronoun or the other to come first, and generally being less clunky to write, read, and say. However, it also has its disadvantages, such as the possibility of confusion if a single unknown person is referred to with “they” in the same passage where a group of people is also referred to with “they.” This can be avoided with careful enough phrasing, but having to phrase things carefully to avoid pronoun confusion can get annoying.

So, after reading about how quickly the generic “he” became “he or she,” and knowing that “he or she” now seems to be turning into singular “they,” I’ve been wondering: is there going to be another shift? If we move away from “they,” where will we go next? Or do you think we’ll be sticking with it for a while, until it’s swept away in some big social movement? I don’t know if anyone is still looking at this blog, since the semester is over, but if anyone does read this, I’d like to hear your thoughts!