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Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns

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"Hir" redirects here. For other uses, see Hir (disambiguation).

This term designates two distinct grammatical phenomena:

  • pronouns/periphrastics that have been assigned nontraditional meanings in modern times out of a concern for gender-equity, and
  • genderless pronouns that occur traditionally in human languages.

In some languages — notably most Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic and Niger-Congo languages — some personal pronouns intrinsically distinguish male from female; the selection of a pronoun necessarily specifies, at least to some extent, the gender of what is referred to. Traditionally, the masculine form has been taken to be the markless form, that is the form to be used unless it is known to be inappropriate. This has dictated the masculine pronoun in cases such as

  • reference to an indefinite person, for example: "If anybody comes, tell him…"
  • reference to a group containing men and women, for example French: Vos parents, sont-ils arrivés ? ("Your parents, have they arrived?")

Since as early as 1795[1], this property has led to the call for gender-neutral pronouns. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is often interpreted to mean that people will be less sexist if they do not distinguish gender in pronouns or other aspects of speech; however, patriarchal societies with genderless languages, such as the Chinese, demonstrate that gendered pronouns are not a prerequisite for inequality to exist (note that it would, however, be false logic to conclude from this that gendered pronouns do not contribute to sexism by marking women as 'other'). Attempts to invent pronouns for this purpose date back at least to 1850.[2]

In other languages, pronouns do not distinguish between genders, so gender-equity of pronouns is moot. In this category are many East-asian languages (see below).

Problem

The gender-specificity of English pronouns creates potential problems:

  • Gender bias can be interjected into language, and biased gender roles may be interjected into language.
  • A speaker may wish to mask the gender of the person being discussed, e.g. to avoid indicating whether a romantic partner is male or female (see pronoun game).
  • A speaker may not know the referent's gender, and implying one may be misleading or otherwise inappropriate.
  • A speaker may be discussing someone who is described poorly (or not at all) by the gender categories associated with "he" and "she," as in the case of a referent who identifies as genderqueer.

Governments, clubs, and other groups have interpreted sentences like 'every member must take off his shoes before entering the chapel' to mean that therefore female members may not enter the chapel. The Persons Case, the legal battle over whether Canadian women counted as legal persons eligible to sit in the Senate, partially turned on such a point.

In 1984 the Minnesota State Legislature ordered that all gender-specific language be removed from the state laws. After two years of work, the rewritten laws were adopted. Only 301 of 20,000 pronouns were feminine. "His" was changed 10,000 times and "he" was changed 6,000 times.

By contrast, the Constitution of Ireland describes the President of Ireland throughout as 'he', yet the two most recent presidents were women; in 1997, four of the five candidates in the election were women. Efforts in a court case to argue that 'he' excluded women were dismissed by the Irish Supreme Court, which ruled the term 'gender-neutral'. (Note that the Constitution's primary version is in Irish, where the male pronoun sé is considered gender-neutral.)

Historical solutions

Universal 'He'

Use of he to refer to a person of unknown gender was prescribed by manuals of style and school textbooks from the early 19th century until around the 1960s. It was called 'generic' or 'universal'.[citation needed]

  • The customer brought his purchases to the cashier for checkout.
  • In a supermarket, anyone can buy anything he needs.
  • When a customer argues, always agree with him.

This may be compared to usage of the word man to humans in general.

  • "All men are created equal."
  • "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
  • "Man cannot live by bread alone."

Gender-specific pronouns were also prescribed when one might presume that most members of some group are the same gender.

  • A secretary should keep her temper in check.
  • A janitor should respect and listen to his employers.
  • Every hairdresser has her own style.
  • A junior doctor is at the bottom of his profession.

Singular 'they'

Since at least the 15th century 'they', 'them' and 'their' have been used, in an increasingly more accepted fashion, as singular pronouns. This is called the singular 'they'.

'One'

Some sentences can be rephrased to use the impersonal pronoun 'one':

  • Each student should save his questions until the end.
  • One should save one's questions until the end.

Modern Solutions

None of the traditional options is completely satisfactory. Singular 'they' is still nonstandard and offends the grammatical sensibility of many listeners. 'One' can be used only in a minority of sentences, or only with drastic paraphrasing. Universal 'he' in particular has been a source of controversy. The 19th and 20th centuries saw an upsurge in consciousness and advocacy of gender-equity. In that context, the traditional use of the universal 'he' appears chauvinistic. More gender-equitable suggestions have therefore been introduced.

'S/he'

The periphrastics "she or he", "him or her", "his or her", "his or hers", "himself or herself" largely resolve the problem, though they are cumbersome. They can be abbreviated in writing as "s/he", "him/r", "his/r", "him/rself", but when spoken have no accepted abbreviation.

Alternation

Authors sometimes employ rubrics for selecting "she" or "he" such as

  • Use the gender of the primary author.
  • Alternate between "she" and "he".
  • Alternate by paragraph or chapter.

Invented pronouns

Some groups and individuals have used non-standard pronouns, hoping they will become standard. Various proposals for such changes have been around since at least the 19th century. For example, contractions have been proposed: 'e (for he or she) or 's (for his/hers) or h' (for him/her in object case), and even 'self (for himself/herself). The American Heritage Book of English Usage says of these efforts:

Like most efforts at language reform, these well-intended suggestions have been largely ignored by the general English-speaking public, and the project to supplement the English pronoun system has proved to be an ongoing exercise in futility. Pronouns are one of the most basic components of a language, and most speakers appear to have little interest in adopting invented ones. This may be because in most situations people can get by using the plural pronoun they or using other constructions that combine existing pronouns, such as he/she or 'he or she'.[3]

Summary

The following table summarizes the foregoing approaches.

  Nominative (subject) Objective (object) Possessive determiner Possessive pronoun Reflexive
Traditional pronouns
He He laughed I called him His eyes gleam That is his He likes himself
She She laughed I called her Her eyes gleam That is hers She likes herself
It It laughed I called it Its eyes gleam That is its It likes itself
One One laughed I called one One's eyes gleam That is one's One likes oneself
Conventions based on traditional pronouns
S/he S/he laughed I called him/her His/her eyes gleam That is his/hers S/he likes him/herself
S/he (compact) S/he laughed I called him/r His/r eyes gleam That is his/rs S/he likes him/rself
Singular they They laughed I called them Their eyes gleam That is theirs They like themselves
Invented pronouns
Co Co laughed I called co Cos eyes gleam That is cos Co likes coself
Ne (pronounced Nee like "me") Ne laughed I called nir Nir eyes gleam That is nirs Ne likes nyself
Spivak (old) E laughed I called em Eir eyes gleam That is eirs E likes eirself
Spivak (new) Ey laughed I called em Eir eyes gleam That is eirs Ey likes emself
Hy Hy laughed I called hym Hys eyes gleam That is hys Hy likes hymself
Thon[4] Thon laughed I called thon Thons eyes gleam That is thon's Thon likes thonself
Ve[5] Ve laughed I called ver Vis eyes gleam That is vis Ve likes verself
Xe[6] Xe laughed I called xem Xyr eyes gleam That is xyrs Xe likes xemself
Ze (or zie or sie) and hir[7] Ze laughed I called hir Hir eyes gleam That is hirs Ze likes hirself
Ze and mer[8] Ze laughed I called mer Zer eyes gleam That is zer Ze likes zemself
Ze, zam, zer[9] Ze laughed I called zam Zer eyes gleam That is zer Ze likes zamself

The gender-neutral pronoun "co" is used in contemporary everyday language by the 100 people who live at Twin Oaks Community in Virginia, USA. It is used to mean "s/he" in the case in which the gender is not known or is irrelevant.[10]

There are also reports of students in Baltimore consistently using "yo" as a gender-neutral pronoun.[11]

Traditionally gender-neutral pronouns

All languages allow the speaker to specify whether one is talking about a male or female, but some languages do not require the speaker to make that choice as an intrinsic part of the language.[12]

Middle English

Historically, there were two gender neutral pronouns native to English dialects, 'ou' and 'a', but they have long since died out. According to Dennis Baron's Grammar and Gender:

In 1789, William H. Marshall records the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular "ou": "'Ou will' expresses either he will, she will, or it will." Marshall traces "ou" to Middle English epicene "a", used by the 14th century English writer John of Trevisa, and both the OED and Wright's English Dialect Dictionary confirm the use of "a" for he, she, it, they, and even I. This "a" is a reduced form of the Anglo-Saxon he = "he" and heo = "she".[13]

Baron goes on to describe how relics of these sex-neutral terms survive in some British dialects of Modern English, and sometimes a pronoun of one gender might be applied to a person or animal of the opposite gender.

Indonesian/Malay

In Indonesian/Malay there is no grammatical gender.

The pronoun dia can mean: "she," "he," "her," or "him" and often also "her" and "his."

Bengali

Despite the fact that it possesses a very large and complex pronominal system, Standard Bengali makes no difference in gender in any of its pronouns. Pronouns are differentiated in terms of person, number, social relationship (intimate vs. familiar vs. formal), and proximity to the speaker (proximal vs. distal vs. non-present).

Chinese

In modern Chinese, there is no gender distinction in pronouns in the spoken language: the pronoun 他 (tā) means 'he' or 'she'. However, around the time of the May Fourth Movement, a new written form 她 of the pronoun was created to specifically represent 'she', and 他 is now sometimes restricted to meaning 'he'. This language reform was part of a 'modernization' movement, and copied from European languages. In writing, 他/她 is used to mean 'he'/'she' (in that order), 它 (tā) to mean 'it' (objects), 牠 (tā) to refer to animals and 祂 (tā) to denote God. These pronouns are pronounced identically; the difference appears only in writing.

With the exception of 它, each of these pronouns is formed from a radical that indicates the nature of its object. 他 is formed from 人 (rén), meaning person; 她 is formed from 女 (nǚ), meaning woman; 牠 is formed from 牛 (niú), meaning cow; and 祂 is formed from 示 (shì), meaning revelation. 他 is accordingly considered by many Chinese speakers to be properly generic, since the antonym to 她 would be formed using the radical for man, 男 (nán), and not that for person, 人 (rén). At present, a specifically male pronoun formed from 男 and 也 is not in use.

The Cantonese third person singular pronoun is keui5. In written Cantonese, the character most commonly used to record this is 佢; it may be used to refer to people of either gender. The practice of replacing the "亻" radical with "女" (forming the character 姖) to specifically indicate the female gender may also be seen occasionally in informal writing; however, this is neither widely accepted nor grammatically or semantically required, and, unlike 佢, the character 姖 has a separate meaning in standard Chinese.[14]

Filipino

The national language of the Philippines only has gender neutral pronouns; siya is used for all people, and occasionally animals. The pronoun ito (it) is used for objects.

Uralic Languages

Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are Finno-Ugric that belong to the Uralic languages family of languages (thus not Indo-European) languages. All pronouns are gender-neutral. The third-person singular and plural personal pronouns are hän and he in Finnish, tema and nemad in Estonian and ő and ők in Hungarian, respectively, which always refer to persons or animals.

In the last few decades the Finnish spoken language has also moved in this direction. The third-person singular and plural are, respectively, se and ne, which according to the written language specifications refer to an inanimate object or an animal. Thus, at a time when English is moving towards gender-neutrality, Finnish is moving to species-neutrality.

Georgian

Georgian, a South Caucasian language, has gender-neutral pronouns.

Irish

In Irish, the male singular pronoun sé is used as a gender-neutral term; however, the third-person male plural disappeared from Irish, and the (originally) female siad is now used for all instances of "they".

Japanese

Japanese does not have pronouns in the Indo-European sense, but does have nouns that are similar to pronouns. For example, kare (彼、かれ)　and kanojo （彼女、かのじょ） can be used for 'he' and 'she'. However, kare in its plural form may refer to a group of mixed gender. Depending on context, kare or kanojo may also refer to boyfriend or girlfriend respectively. This is not commonplace and the phrase Ano hito (あの人) (literally 'that person') and other similar phrases would be more appropriate. The most common way to refer to another person is by title or affiliation, e.g. bu-cho (部長) ('director') or Hitachi-san ('the person from Hitachi'). In general, the Japanese avoid using pronouns when they can be determined from context, and often use a person's name where English would use a pronoun. This can be seen in the custom of often referring to oneself by name rather than by watashi（私） most commonly by women or boku(僕) by men, both meaning I/myself.

The English titles of 'Mr', 'Mrs', 'Miss', 'Ms' are all irrelevant as all people are referred to by the suffix -san (さん) or the more polite -sama (様). The most polite suffix -dono　（殿）, usually, but not always refers to males, and is rarely used in modern speech.

There is a distinction between animate and inanimate, but this is restricted to the verbs that mean 'to exist': iru/oru　（居る） (animate) and aru （在る）　(inanimate) and does not extend to pronouns. There is no equivalent of 'it'; instead something like this /that thing (kono/ano mono　このあの物) would be used, although often the subject or topic would be left out and determined from context.

Japanese does have different styles of speech for men and women, so it would be inaccurate to say that the language is entirely gender-neutral. However, for the equivalent of pronouns and titles, the language is essentially gender-neutral. This seems to be fairly deep in the semantics of speakers, as it is very common to hear　even native level English-speaking Japanese occasionally mix up 'he' and 'she’.

Korean

Before modernization, in Korean 그 (geu) meant 'he', 'she', and 'it' like Chinese tā.[citation needed] But in Modern Korean geu usually means 'he'. 그녀 (geu-nyeo) with the suffix -녀(女, -nyeo) meaning woman, is used for 'she'. 그것 (geu-geot) means 'it'.[citation needed]

Sometimes geu-nyeo means more than 'she' as pronoun, because the word geu is also used to show definiteness, like the article 'the' in English.

Nahuatl

In Nahuatl all pronouns and pronoun affixes are independent of gender.

Persian

The Persian language has no trace of grammatical gender: 'he',' she', and 'it' are all expressed by the same pronoun u. This lack of specification has allowed for fluidity in reading the gender of both human lovers and the divine beloved in Persian poetry.

Turkic Languages

All Turkish pronouns, like the other members in the family of Turkic languages, are gender-inclusive. The English pronouns 'he', 'she', and 'it' all correspond to the only Turkish third-person singular personal pronoun o.

Romance languages

The choice of possessive pronoun in many Romance languages is determined by the grammatical gender of the possessed object; the gender of the possessor is not explicit. For instance, in French the possessive pronouns are sa for a feminine object, and son for a masculine object: son livre can mean either 'his book' or 'her book'; the masculine son is used because livre is masculine. Similarly, sa maison means either 'his house' or 'her house' because 'maison' is feminine. Non-possessive pronouns, on the other hand, are usually gender-specific.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Williams, John (1990s). "History - Modern Neologism". Gender-Neutral Pronoun FAQ. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
  2. ^ ibid
  3. ^ "5.4, Gender: Sexist Language and Assumptions — epicene pronouns". The American Heritage Book of English Usage. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1996. ISBN 0-39576-785-7.
  4. ^ proposed in 1884 by American lawyer Charles Crozat Converse. Reference: "Epicene". The Mavens' Word of the Day. Random House. 1998-08-12. Retrieved 2006-12-20.
  5. ^ Proposed by New Zealand writer Keri Hulme some time in the 1980s. Also used by writer Greg Egan for non-gendered artificial intelligences and "asex" humans.
    Egan, Greg (July 1998). [[Diaspora (novel)|Diaspora]]. Gollancz. ISBN 0-75280-925-3. {{cite book}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
    Egan, Greg. Distress. ISBN 1-85799-484-1.
  6. ^ A discussion about theory of Mind: a paper from 2000 that uses and defines these pronouns
  7. ^ Example:
    Bornstein, Kate. My Gender Workbook. ISBN 0-41591-673-9.
  8. ^ Creel, Richard (1997). "Ze, Zer, Mer". APA Newsletters. The American Philosophical Association. Retrieved 2006-05-15. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  9. ^ Hollingsworth, Daniel (2009). "Ze, Zam, Zer". UgniverZe. mozjo.com. Retrieved 2009-05-17. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  10. ^ Visitor Guide - Twin Oaks Intentional Community
  11. ^ "'Yo' Being Used As 'Gender-Neutral Pronoun'". Big News Day. Global News likes. 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-07. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |accessyear= (help)
  12. ^ Siewierska, Anna; Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns; in Haspelmath, Martin; Dryer, Matthew S.; Gil, David; Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures, pp. 182-185. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-19-925591-1
  13. ^ Baron, Dennis (1986). Grammar and Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03526-8.
    As cited by: Williams, John (1990s). "History - Native-English GNPs". Gender-Neutral Pronoun FAQ. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
  14. ^ "Chinese Character Database: Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect". Chinese University of Hong Kong. 2006. Retrieved 2007-02-16.. The entry for "佢" (humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk) notes its use as a third-person pronoun in Cantonese, but the entry for "姖" (idem) does not; it only gives the pronunciation geoi6 and notes that it is used in placenames.
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