Abstract
It was the Oxford University’s Students Union (OUSU) which first promoted the use of gender-inclusive pronouns to avoid gender-binarism in the English-speaking European academic life. OUSU finds it supportive if students declare their chosen pronouns by which they wish to be addressed at meetings (he, she or ze). Public attention turned to the emergence of the new pronoun. The present study aims to explore the social perception of the newly appearing gender-neutral neologism by mapping public attitude towards the idea of institutionally introducing a neopronoun (ze) in the English language for the sake of celebrating gender diversity. The discourse plane investigated in the research was comments given to online newspaper articles. The genre of comments provides insights into the opinions and feelings of the general public. A near-thousand comments of online dialogues displayed on the websites of six British newspapers (three broadsheets and three tabloids) during a one-year timespan (December 2016 – December 2017) were analysed qualitatively. Arguments on either discourse position were studied, hidden premises were uncovered. The results of the exploratory study reveal that there is a notable imbalance in the voicing of opinions: the promotion of the gender-neutral English pronoun is markedly underrepresented in the public (1.32%) while the set of arguments against its introduction is versatile. The findings of the analysis indicate that the voice of the people does not consider pronoun-binarism as a sign of exclusion or the marginalizing of gender-diverse people; however, the novel pronoun tends to excite shock and refusal in the public.
Highlights
Among the first advocates in European academic life, the Oxford University’s Students Union (OUSU) promoted the use of gender-inclusive pronouns to avoid gender-binarism in 2016
The proportion of the readership of the tabloid newspapers who engaged in commenting the gender-neutral pronoun (GNP) appreciatively reached the same insignificant rate: 1.36 per cent of them believed that the English language should be changed in order to promote overt inclusivity of non-binarism
The present discourse analytical research aimed to explore the social perception of institutionally introducing a GNP in the English language for the sake of celebrating gender diversity
Summary
Among the first advocates in European academic life, the Oxford University’s Students Union (OUSU) promoted the use of gender-inclusive pronouns to avoid gender-binarism in 2016. The OUSU found it supportive if students identified and declared their chosen pronouns by which they preferred to be addressed at meetings (he, she or ze). Stemming from the Latin word genus (with the shades of meaning of birth, family, descent, origin, and race), the notion of gender has become many-faceted. It has been used as a grammatical term since the 14th century; from the mid-20th century it has become common to denote biological sex; and lately, it refers to social and cultural identities. As a pronoun of reference, many gender nonconforming people prefer singular they (cf Bjorkman 2017), which choice is supported by the argument that they is already part of the English language. The study overviews the scope and the limits of the use of singular they and other innovative alternative pronouns
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