You're right about everything. But I'd argue if we're going to dedicate time to 'guys', we should no less have a meeting about every single other possible ambiguity that hardly matters, and try to somehow encourage inconvenient changes to people's natural vocabularies.
Similarly to the article above, during the meeting, no alternative was suggested. I like the word 'guys' for its casualness. If you're at risk of being perceived as somewhat authoritative, it can help induce a more casual tone. I thought about 'peeps' but that's too casual (and frankly weird, in a business setting). 'Everyone' is far too sterile. 'Ladies and gentlemen' is weird. 'All' (e.g. 'hi all') is also impersonal.
Workplaces could over-analyse and pick about minutiae all day long, and how productive is that? I reasoned that if we are going to pick about minutiae, then it should at least be the worst of the worst offences, and should be accompanied with some alternatives or solutions. Not just "Don't do <x> because I said so" type of thing.
In my experience y’all works as a perfect alternative to “you guys”, even as a non-Southerner myself. After my initial discomfort using it it became quite natural.
I am not a “y’all”, and I’m not a “folk”. If you use either of these terms to refer to a group that includes me or potentially could include me I will interpret it as a deliberate insult.
Curiously the words you list for that usage are now tell tale signs of language policing.
It's almost as revealing as "Yikes, there's a lot of issues to unpack there. Top of mind is the absence of guardrails around inappropriate language and metaphor."
Quite how we've reached the point where political persuasions are linguistically distinct I have no idea.
Come on. You can’t honestly tell me that “folks” or “y’all” are signs of language policing. I think many Southerners would vehemently disagree with you.
You've walked into a pretty innocuous conversation here, and tried to start a culture-war argument even though nobody present has actually taken the position you want to argue against. Please consider not doing that in the future.
I’m sorry you’re offended by people trying to be nice to others by avoiding language they don’t appreciate. I promise nobody is gonna force you to do the same.
What I said is it is a sign of language policing, and that means a sign of the sort of people that like to deliberately misinterpret things so they get to be offended and virtue signal about the response. Normal people, unlike myself, simply shut up as a defence mechanism.
Perhaps the solution then should be to replace “y’all” with the northern regional equivalents of “youse” or even “yinz.” Would you feel happier about that?
What argument do you presume I’m advancing? Perhaps your tendency to see everything as a competition is why you view each conversation as a psychoanalysis evaluation.
Similarly to the article above, during the meeting, no alternative was suggested. I like the word 'guys' for its casualness. If you're at risk of being perceived as somewhat authoritative, it can help induce a more casual tone. I thought about 'peeps' but that's too casual (and frankly weird, in a business setting). 'Everyone' is far too sterile. 'Ladies and gentlemen' is weird. 'All' (e.g. 'hi all') is also impersonal.
Workplaces could over-analyse and pick about minutiae all day long, and how productive is that? I reasoned that if we are going to pick about minutiae, then it should at least be the worst of the worst offences, and should be accompanied with some alternatives or solutions. Not just "Don't do <x> because I said so" type of thing.