We expect to see a lot of lower scores on the “distinct sentences” portion of the Microlab, but many students this semester lamented low scores in “misplaced modifiers” and “pronouns.” Several students had already seen comments on their papers about “dangling” or misplaced modifiers, but there seems to be a general confusion about the pronouns category.
It makes sense for me, if the Microlab looks at relative pronouns. I’ve been expressing concern about that 😉 for at least the last year. Purdue’s Online Writing Center explains it fairly well, but I may prefer wikipedia – because the table on the OWL site may seem to imply that “that” can be used to refer to people. I have an issue with that. For example here’s a quote from the 9/20/10 US magazine “Loose Talk” section – where they provide quotes from celebs.
It’s nice to be one of the guys that can help sell a movie by taking his shirt off, [but] by no means do I want to be a piece of meat for the rest of my career (Lutz 34 – emphasis mine).
This is funny! The use of “that” rather than “who” as a relative pronoun choice denies himself the humanity he claims to eventually want. He treats himself as an inanimate object, implying linguistically that he is, after all, just “a piece of meat.” Is there anything wrong with that?
Purdue would say he can to that he can do that (but not necessarily that he should) – but almost every other style book frowns seriously on using “that” when “who” traditionally would be called for. To me in this instance it seems imprecise and undercuts Kellan’s argument that he should be eventually taken seriously. Unless one is referring to work as a meat puppet (Philip K. Dick reference – not necessarily the punk band) one should not use “that” to refer to a human.
Does anyone remember the trouble President Clinton got into for a reference to “that woman”?
