Two experiments test how college students use nonbinary they to refer to a single and specific person whose pronouns are they/them, e.g., “Alex played basketball on the neighborhood court. At one point they made a basket,” compared to matched stories about characters with binary (she/her or he/him) pronouns. Experiment 1 shows that for both types of pronouns, people use pronouns more in a one-person than a two-person context. In both experiments, people produce nonbinary they at least as frequently as binary pronouns, suggesting that any difficulty does not result in pronoun avoidance in spoken language, even though it does in written language (Arnold et al., 2022). Nevertheless, there is evidence that nonbinary they is somewhat difficult, in that people made gender errors on about 9% of trials, and they used a more acoustically prominent and disfluent-sounding pronunciation for nonbinary pronouns than binary pronouns. However, exposure to they in the context of the experiment had no effect on frequency, accuracy, or pronunciation of pronouns. This provides the first evidence of how nonbinary they is used in a naturalistic storytelling context and shows that while it poses some minor difficulties, it can be used successfully in a supportive context.
- Award ID(s):
- 2046873
- PAR ID:
- 10462496
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 5352 to 5367
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Singular they has emerged as a key term in contemporary gender politics, reflecting growing usage of they/them as nonbinary personal pronouns. Drawing on interviews with 54 progressive gender activists, we consider how singular they can be used to resist and redo aspects of the prevailing gender structure. We identify three distinct usages of singular they: (1) as a nonbinary personal pronoun, (2) as a universal gender-neutral pronoun, and (3) as an indefinite pronoun when a person’s self-identified gender is unknown. While previous research on singular they as a gender-inclusive language practice has focused primarily on its usage as a nonbinary personal pronoun, our findings point to the relevance for gender politics of all three usages. Our analysis offers new insight into how nonbinary they challenges dominant gender norms and practices beyond incorporating additional gender categories. Given our findings, we propose further investigation of how using gender-neutral pronouns for everyone in specific contexts can advance progressive activists’ goals. Finally, we argue that the longstanding usage of singular they as an indefinite pronoun has new importance today in affirming gender as a self-determined identity.
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Arnold, J. E., Mayo, H., & Dong, L. (2020). Individual differences (or the lack of them) in comprehension of singular they. Technical Report #3. UNC Language Processing Lab, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The pronoun “they” can refer to an individual who identifies as nonbinary, but it also is commonly used as a plural pronoun. How do listeners identify whether “they” is being used in a singular or plural sense? Arnold, Mayo, & Dong (in press) report three experiments in that test the role of explicitly introducing gender identity via pronouns, e.g. “This is Alex, and they use they/them pronouns.” Participants read short stories like “Alex went running with Liz and they fell down.” Answers to “Who fell down” indicated whether participants interpreted they as Alex or Alex-and-Liz. Singular interpretations of they were more likely when participants hear an explicit statement that Alex uses they/them pronouns, and in supporting discourse contexts. This paper is a companion to the main article, and reports analyses of individual difference measures. Participants self-reported familiarity with individuals who identify as nonbinary, which was expected to increase singular interpretations, but mostly it did not. In experiment 2 we also measured print exposure, but we found that it did not affect interpretation of singular they. In short, we saw virtually no effects of individual difference predictors.more » « less
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he pronoun “they” can refer to an individual who identifies as nonbinary, but it also is commonly used as a plural pronoun. How do listeners identify whether “they” is being used in a singular or plural sense? Arnold, Mayo, & Dong (in press) report three experiments in that test the role of explicitly introducing gender identity via pronouns, e.g. “This is Alex, and they use they/them pronouns.” Participants read short stories like “Alex went running with Liz and they fell down.” Answers to “Who fell down” indicated whether participants interpreted they as Alex or Alex-and-Liz. Singular interpretations of they were more likely when participants hear an explicit statement that Alex uses they/them pronouns, and in supporting discourse contexts. This paper is a companion to the main article, and reports analyses of individual difference measures. Participants self-reported familiarity with individuals who identify as nonbinary, which was expected to increase singular interpretations, but mostly it did not. In experiment 2 we also measured print exposure, but we found that it did not affect interpretation of singular they. In short, we saw virtually no effects of individual difference predictors.more » « less
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This study investigates pronoun interpretation by second language (L2) learners of English, focusing on whether first language (L1) transfer and/or processing difficulty affect L2 learners’ pronoun resolution. It is hypothesized that L2 learners’ non-target performance in L2-pronoun interpretation is attributable to two sources. The first is the computational complexity required for pronoun resolution, as argued in L1 acquisition by Grodzinsky and Reinhart and L2 acquisition by Slabakova et al. The second is how pronoun interpretation operates in L1. The hypothesis is tested by comparing Korean and Spanish L2-English learners’ interpretation of English pronouns using a Truth Value Judgment Task. Both groups had difficulty rejecting pronouns with local-referential antecedents when their proficiency levels were low. Additionally, Korean speakers showed more non-target responses than Spanish speakers due to their knowledge of pronoun interpretation in Korean. These results indicate that both L1 transfer and processing difficulty may be sources of L2 learners’ non-target pronoun interpretation, supporting the hypothesis of the study.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.acl-long.293
