Opinion: the increased use of the singular "they" pronoun comes about as more people feel excluded by the division between "he" and "she"
By Stephen Lucek, UCD
The singer Sam Smith recently announced that they prefer to be referred to with gender-neutral pronouns. The Wall Street Journal has updated their stylebook to reflect that Mx. is the way that their writers should refer to people who identify with non-gendered pronouns.
Since gender is a fluid notion, why should we care about how people identify themselves? Maybe if we take a look at gender in the world's languages, we can see why pronouns matter.
Think about a language, any language. If you’re forming a sentence in this language, do you need to know the gender of the nouns? According to the World Atlas of Language Structures Online, you have about a 50/50 chance of saying "yes" as you do of saying "no". So, if you’re talking about "the moon" in German (der Mond) and Spanish (la luna), these nouns are marked as being masculine (German) or feminine (Spanish). For some, this is a chance to test something called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This hypothesis is one way of explaining what we sometimes call "untranslatables": words (or more importantly, concepts) that can’t be translated from one language to another.
From Seventeen magazine, why gender pronouns matter
A strict reading of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says that the language that we speak affects how we think, so this would lead you to believe that there is something about the way that German people conceive of the masculine concept of the moon. This is the sort of argument that lead some of the worst examples of humanity into conversations about intellectual superiority of speakers of specific languages (see, for example, the Nazis). This is the deterministic model of linguistic relativism: the language we speak determines how we see the world.
The weaker version of Sapir-Whorf says that there is a link between our language and the way we see the world. Therefore, when Lorca writes about the moon, la luna is usually associated with feminine qualities, specifically possessing the physical attributes typical of womanhood. This doesn’t mean that Lorca believes that the moon is a woman, but rather that there is something ladylike about la luna. The linguistic influence interpretation of Sapir-Whorf says that there are aspects of a language that affect how we think about them, but these constraints don’t determine how these concepts exist in our minds.
Grammatical gender has been a feature of the world’s languages for millennia and has been viewed as being influential in how languages evolved over time. So when we think about the moon in different languages, there are different associations amongst German speakers than there are amongst Spanish speakers. In English, we really don’t have to deal with gendered nouns too often. We have some words that are directly indexed to a gender (e.g. uncle, aunt) but the most likely source of gendered language, according to Elinor Ochs, takes the form of indirect indexes of gender.
From BBC 3, things not to say to a non-binary person
So where does this leave pronouns? Even if a language doesn’t have grammatical gender, there is an even higher likelihood that there are gendered pronouns. Here’s the fun part: not all languages have two genders. Some languages have as many as 13, 15 or 20 gender options in differentiating types of words. Why then would English be limited to two (three if you include the sometimes inanimate "it") genders? Why is gender important?
Let’s focus on personal pronouns. With greater sensitivity to gender identity in recent years, we’ve seen more attention paid to how some people are excluded by the division between "he" and "she" in English. Many of us have taken to using a different pronoun in English: the singular "they". Partially to avoid gendering a group of people by making it sound as if only "he" or "she" should do something, the singular "they" also respects an individual’s right to identify with gender-neutral pronouns. If you don’t want to reveal the gender identity of a person, whether it’s someone who you’re referring for a job or they are a whistleblower, there are many reasons to protect someone’s gender identity.
It's worth noting that the singular "they" is nothing new. In a recent blog post, linguist Dennis Baron notes that singular they dates back to 1375, and has been used intermittently ever since popping up in Chaucer and Shakespeare. Baron has literally written the book on pronouns and has been highlighting the existence of singular they.
In 2015 I joined the APA working group advocating for more gender inclusive pronouns in the APA Publication Manual. Singular *they* is now official. On to MLA... pic.twitter.com/PX47XFLNA4
— Dennis Baron (@DrGrammar) October 10, 2019
English is not alone in trying to de-gender some aspects of its discourse, as some in France are looking to address gender inequality in its language. Using gender-neutral pronouns is about gender equity and non-binary gender identity. And one doesn’t have to be someone with a non-binary gender identity. Cis gender people have a role to play in demystifying gender identity and pronoun choice. Those of us who specify our pronouns on social media or in real life can play a huge role in making it easier for those of us who don’t identify with cis genders.
If you’re not sure what you can do, have a look at the website for International Pronouns Day which has a number of resources for people who are new to gender-neutral words, and for those who don’t know how to help. What’s more, if you prefer to use a gender-specific set of pronouns, no one is going to make you stop. That’s your personal choice, too. All that non-gender pronoun users want is respect for their own choices.
Dr Stephen Lucek is an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow in Linguistics in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at UCD.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
