Q. When referring to a zombie, should I use the relative pronoun who (which would refer to a person) or that (since, technically, the zombie is no longer living)? Essentially, does a zombie cease to become a “person” in the grammatical sense?
A. Let’s assume this is a serious question, in which case you, as the writer, get to decide just how much humanity (if any) and grammatical sense you wish to invest in said zombie. That will guide your choice of who or that.
Doing a research project is a lot like surviving a zombie apocalypse. The first step is to be prepared. When you do a research project you collect all your information on your topic first, so research zombies and learn their weaknesses for a better chance of survival. [From "Zombie Apocalypse: Zombie Research."GMC Library Guides. Georgia Military College, Last Date Updated. Web. 19 Oct, 2014..]
Word Origin: Zombie was originally the name of a snake-god in the voodoo cult of West Africa, and later of the Caribbean, and it comes from a West African language (it is related to Kongo nzambi ‘god’ and zumbi ‘fetish’). It was later applied to a reanimated corpse in the voodoo cult, and a ghoulish sense of humour transferred the English word in the 1930s to a ‘catatonically slow-witted person’.
"zombie." Word Origins. London: A&C Black, 2006. Credo Reference. Web. 10 October 2012.
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LaGuardia Community College Library Guides are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
LibGuide originally created by GMC Library Guides. Georgia Military College, Last Date Updated. Web. Date Accessed.
MLA Citation: "Zombie Research Guide." LaGuardia Community College Library Research Guides. LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. Last Date Updated. Web. Date Accessed.
For any questions: contact Ann Matsuuchi, LaGuardia Community College Library