Contemporary “standard” English famously lacks a distinction between singular and plural in the second person, but almost as famously, “non-standard” varieties of English are forever innovating new second person plural pronouns—y’all, yinz, yous, and similar—or else simply retain singular thou. All of these moves address an ambiguity that does exist in the standard pronoun inventory, though one that frankly doesn’t cause as much confusion as we might have expected.
In one way, the question of whether you guys is a pronoun or not doesn’t matter except as an interesting intellectual exercise. But in another way, this question provides context for another one, about which people get quite exercised: whether you guys perpetuates the idea that masculine is the default, and so is something we should avoid using.
I can report that people get quite annoyed, sometimes even angry, about you guys. If that describes you, and you are reading this blog post, then first of all: thank you for reading this far! Even though I think the evidence shows that you guys is genuinely a gender-neutral second person pronoun for some English speakers, I don’t think that by itself is an argument that nobody should get angry about it.
The argument that you guys is gendered is very straightforward: the noun guys is right there, and the noun guys is gender specific, therefore you guys is too.
Now, if you guys is properly treated as a pronoun, it’s less obvious that [gajz] is necessarily the noun. All the same, I think most you guys users would probably agree that it contains “guys” (compare “should of” and uncertainty about how to spell “use(d) to”, which suggest that people don’t see these as containing “have” or a past tense, respectively)—the above-noted variant spelling “you guise” aside.
But while the properties of a phrase are usually determined by the properties of the words inside that phrase, that isn’t always the case. It can be false that I went anywhere but true that I went to sleep; no liquid receptacles need be overturned if I kick the bucket.
gummygunk
janainaart
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
tangentwithtanner
