{"id":37,"date":"2026-02-03T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T19:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/?p=37"},"modified":"2026-02-03T19:45:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T19:45:00","slug":"the-first-key-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"The first key question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Who is \u201cthey\u201d? This is the most critical question, as it seeks to unmask the unspecified. Can the speaker be explicit? Does the author feel comfortable attaching more detail to the group being labeled? In large organizations, sometimes asking for clarity on who \u201cthey\u201d is forces someone to realize that they don\u2019t actually know who instituted a policy, or aren\u2019t really sure where guidance came from &#8211; it was just accepted as coming from \u201cthem\u201d and accepted as real.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And to quickly address the obvious: it\u2019s not technically grammatically correct to frame the question as \u201cwho is they\u201d. By convention, \u201cwho are they\u201d is correct. But sometimes \u201cthey\u201d can be a proxy for one person who may or may not have been speaking on behalf of a group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey said no parking here.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWho is they?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSome lady walking down the other sidewalk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDoes the lady walking down the sidewalk have some kind of authority? Or are we just assuming she is right and deputized to speak on behalf of enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI\u2019m not sure\u2026maybe we can park here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who is \u201cthey\u201d? This is the most critical question, as it seeks to unmask the unspecified. Can the speaker be explicit? Does the author feel comfortable attaching more detail to the group being labeled? In large organizations, sometimes asking for clarity on who \u201cthey\u201d is forces someone to realize that they don\u2019t actually know who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38,"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/38"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perniciousthey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}