Gendered Pronouns & Singular “They”
What is a pronoun? Why do people use different ones? Why are he and she not enough?
Linguistically, personal pronouns are words that refer to people by replacing proper nouns, like names. A pronoun can refer to either a person performing an action or a person who is having an action done to them. Common pronouns include they/them/theirs, she/her/hers, and he/him/his. Pronouns often indicate the gender of a person; traditionally, he refers to males while she refers to females. While the English language does not have a unique gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, they has been used to identify singular persons in speech, popular literature, and dictionary reference materials since at least the 12th century. In fact, singular use of they has been officially recognized as correct by several key bodies such as the Associated Press, American Psychological Association (APA) and Modern Language Association (MLA), the Oxford English Dictionary, and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Knowing that they can be used to refer to individual people allows writers to avoid defaulting to he or she in regular use. It is also important for people whose genders are neither male nor female. In the words of the Chicago Manual (17th ed.), "Some people identify not with a gender-specific pronoun but instead with the pronoun they and its forms or some other gender-neutral singular pronoun; any such preference should generally be respected."
Everyone has a asshole so why don't we just use the word asshole or ass?
- Ripmany
- 10-04-2023, 11:27 PM
- ICU 812
- 10-05-2023, 04:32 AM
Often, I answer to the pronlun, "HEYYOU!'
- Levianon17
- 10-05-2023, 06:54 AM