I'm old enough to remember when it was standard to assume masculine when the gender of the person you were referring to was undetermined. "Someone always forgets his backpack". At some point since around 1995 "they" replaced this convention. 1/
Now that we're in a multi-gender-identity world it's important that we use language that doesn't deliberately offend, but equally we need to recognise that not all linguistic offence is intended. Assume Positive Intent.
It was interesting. As a linguist myself I find the development/evolution of language fascinating. That younger people used they/them pronouns more tracks - they didn't have the use of "he" as a gender-indeterminate drummed into them by schoolmasters in dusty black gowns 1/
and are much more familiar with a non-binary world. My generation (mid-50s) make an effort to use the right pronouns, but sometimes slip up. My mother's generation (80+) try but they're trying to undo years of wiring, and while offence is not intending you're working against muscle-memory. 2/
My grandmother's generation, who had a completely different way of looking at the world and the people in it, who would have used words like "spade" and "queer" without perhaps realising the offensiveness of the language, would be dumbfounded that someone could want to be a "they" or an "it". 3/
it worked really well for eliciting third person reference about a referent I was sure to know, which is incredibly hard to do in a lot of interview methods
this concept is so interesting for me bc when i first came out as genderqueer (around July 2011, I was 19 at the time) i really struggled with deciding what kind of pronoun I wanted to use because "they/them" felt too distant and nonspecific given the contexts I was most familiar with
like i WANT the neutrality of it but i also WANT the unambiguous specificity of he/she. I liked ey/em for this reason but they/them is easier to get people on board with, and i'm also more used to it now. the fact that it has such an overlap in uses makes it an intriguing pronoun.
A person’s primary language patterns have plenty of subconscious influence- consider language fundamentals in the growing number of multilingual English speakers too. Japanese, for example, commonly uses あいつ or こいつ as gender neutral indirect referentials.
Doing a lot of work to be as complete as possible within parameters.
Having been raised by an 18-19th century library and with a smattering of half a dozen languages, most of the results track nicely in my personal and professional scholarship as well.
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Having been raised by an 18-19th century library and with a smattering of half a dozen languages, most of the results track nicely in my personal and professional scholarship as well.