ABSTRACT
Pronouns accomplish these ends, moreover, through the use of a small number of simple words—itself a sharp contrast between them and the nouns they replace, as nouns look continually for ways to call attention to themselves. In inflationary times, then, pronouns offer substantial economies. But this should not blur the fact that these savings, too, come at a price, and one item of evidence for this is in the gender prejudice that pronouns, more than any other part of speech, have come to incorporate. The immediate advantage that affirmative action provides is meant to correct for the effects of this discrimination, which also, presumably, has been or will be ended. Once the institutional prejudice and its effects from the past have been overcome—and particular issues like linguistic practice will be judged in the larger context of social equality as such— affirmative action would no longer be necessary.
