Flow chart: when to use “guys” and when to use…all the other terms. Definitely worth enlarging.
Specifically regarding the use of ‘guys’ — this flowchart, you’ll notice, only has you use ‘guys’ for all-male groups. Now, this flowchart is intended to be prescriptivist (like, obviously; it’s trying to tell you what words to use) and that’s fine in this instance, seeing as it deals with Gender Identity Things and Sexism Things and Respect For People Things. But it’s worth pointing out that at least where I live, this rule is FAR out of line with usage. At least where I live, all genders of people use ‘guys’ for all genders of groups, to the extreme of a female thus describing an all-female group. Of the few non-binary-identifying people I know irl, one specifically says that they consider ‘guys’ a gender-neutral term. (I do not know the others’ opinions.)
But we’re free to decide that we don’t want ‘guys’ to be a gender-neutral term. So the question remains, do we? In my mind: 1. It’s good to have gender-neutral terms; as the above flowchart shows, gender-neutral names for groups are a thing we need; ‘guys’ (at least where I live) is becoming a better and better candidate. On the other hand 2. It’s very unfortunate that it’s always the male term which becomes the gender-neutral term. (actor/actress, hero/heroine, gay/lesbian, etc — the first term can be either specifically male or much more general, right down to ‘Man’ encompassing all of Humanity. Read Hofstadter’s essay about this!)
This is hardly my choice to make, but for what it’s worth that’s how I see the pros and cons.
As far as I’m aware, this flowchart was made by 1 or 2 people (see credits at top) talking to each other about how they would use this set of terms and what they would interpret other people to mean when they used them. So dialect differences are very probably to be expected here.
Like several commenters, I also have “guys” as a gender-neutral term but only in certain contexts.
So I can say “What are you guys doing?” and I could be talking to any plural group, but if I say “When will the guys leave?” that refers to a group of males. (On the other hand, “where are those guys going?” is gender-unspecified again, at least for me.)
The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute
If you don’t think this study is relevant to linguistics, you clearly haven’t been to my department lounge. Click through for full article with fancy graphs showing teaspoon half life!
Objectives: To determine the overall rate of loss of workplace teaspoons and whether attrition and displacement are correlated with the relative value of the teaspoons or type of tearoom.
Design: Longitudinal cohort study.
Setting: Research institute employing about 140 people.
Subjects: 70 discreetly numbered teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute and observed weekly over five months.
Main outcome measures: Incidence of teaspoon loss per 100 teaspoon years and teaspoon half life.
Results: 56 (80%) of the 70 teaspoons disappeared during the study. The half life of the teaspoons was 81 days. The half life of teaspoons in communal tearooms (42 days) was significantly shorter than for those in rooms associated with particular research groups (77 days). The rate of loss was not influenced by the teaspoons’ value. The incidence of teaspoon loss over the period of observation was 360.62 per 100 teaspoon years. At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a practical institute-wide population of 70 teaspoons.
Conclusions: The loss of workplace teaspoons was rapid, showing that their availability, and hence office culture in general, is constantly threatened.
