Pronoun Usage Research Articles

Gender demographics of departmental seminar speakers reflect gender disparities of faculty hosts

Increasing access, representation, and retention of underrepresented groups is essential across academia. Invited speaker seminars are common practice in academic science departments and serve to disseminate research, establish connections and collaborations, advance faculty careers, and connect trainees to mentors outside of departmental faculty. Thus, lack of representation among seminar speakers can affect both faculty and trainee professional development. This study characterizes gender demographics of seminar speakers across science departments at an R1 institution for the years 2015–2019, using pronoun usage as a proxy for gender identity. We found that most faculty and invited speakers were male, and few were female or nonbinary. The percentage of female and nonbinary invited speakers increased from 2015–2019 along with the percentage of female and nonbinary host faculty. Overall, male faculty hosted fewer female and nonbinary speakers than their female and nonbinary faculty colleagues. This study provides evidence for a correlation between faculty identity and the scientists they host at their department and motivates further studies investigating this relationship at other R1 institutions and institution types.

Power or Humble: Personal Pronouns Usage in Indonesian President’s Speech

Delivering a speech in the English language has its own difficulties, especially for a non-native English speaker. The most challenging aspect for a non-native English speaker in delivering an English speech is that the speech delivery process may suffer a negative language transfer because of the differences between the speaker’s official language and English grammatical features. This article aimed to explore the personal pronoun usage of the Indonesian President in the 2014 APEC CEO Summit speech. This qualitative research was done by adopting Fairclough (2013)’s discourse analysis pattern. The findings showed that the most frequent personal pronoun that the President used is “we” and “our”. The use of these two indicates that he speaks on behalf of his country, and he has a sense of solidarity with the citizen. Regarding the personal pronoun, his speech only has minor ineffective usage, so it can be concluded that the usage is generally effective. However, we also found that the speech quality can be judged from many aspects, such as the sentence structure, the vocabulary, and the speech delivery method. Every strategy in doing formal speech has its advantages and disadvantages.

Perioperative Experiences of Transgender Adults Seeking Gender-Affirming Surgery: A Qualitative Interview Study.

Transgender individuals have been systemically excluded from U.S. health care, creating barriers and disparities that other populations do not face. Gender-affirming surgery represents an emerging treatment modality for gender dysphoria, however, little is known about how transgender patients experience the perioperative pathway. This study sought to characterize the experiences of transgender patients seeking gender-affirming surgery and identify opportunities for improvement. A qualitative study was conducted at an academic medical center between July and December 2020. Semistructured interviews were conducted after a postoperative encounter with adult patients who had undergone gender-affirming surgery within the past year. A purposive sampling strategy was used to maximize representation across surgery types and surgeons. Recruitment continued until thematic saturation was reached. All invited patients agreed to participate, yielding 36 interviews (response rate=100%). Four major themes emerged. First, gender-affirming surgery was described as a major life event, often reflecting years of personal decision making and research. Second, participants stressed the importance of surgeon investment, surgeon experience caring for transgender patients, and individualized care in developing a strong relationship with their care team. Third, self-advocacy was necessary to navigate the perioperative pathway and overcome barriers. Last, participants discussed a lack of equity and provider awareness regarding transgender health issues, including correct pronoun usage, terminology, and insurance coverage. Patients undergoing gender-affirming surgery encounter unique perioperative barriers to care, which would benefit from targeted interventions in the health care system. To improve the pathway, our findings support the creation of multidisciplinary gender-affirmation clinics, greater emphasis on transgender care in medical education, and insurance policy reforms aimed at promoting consistent and equitable coverage.

Analysis of Gender Pronoun Errors in Korean Speakers’ English Speech

Since the Korean pronoun system does not specify gender indication, Korean speakers of English tend to have difficulties when they use English pronouns. This paper explores how absence of obligatory gender marking in Korean affects gender errors in the production of English. Gender pronoun errors made by Korean learners of English were analyzed using recordings of English conversations of seven Korean subjects. Findings of this study revealed that Korean English learners struggled with the use of gender pronouns due to differences in gender pronoun systems between Korean and English. Both gender-neutrality and pro-drop practices do not require Korean speakers to pay close attention to gender factors when using pronouns in their native language, resulting in native language interference. Considering that the Korean language lacks specific gender orientation in its usage of pronouns whereas English requires clear gender specification, findings of this study imply that native language gender concept can influence second language use.

Pronouns and Personhood

This paper argues that that to have gender is not having certain reproductive anatomy, but is instead the social meaning of sex. Gender has now become a social construct imposed upon the human person, thwarting their ability to identify as the social gender they subscribe to. Because we seek to identify and organize persons into socio-sexual hierarchy, the gender revolution of the twenty-first century, especially through the identification of personal pronouns, poses al arger question, greater than one of gender orientation. While sociologists are addressing the recent effects of personal pronoun usage, the purpose of this inquiry is to acknowledge the lack of new research material in philosophy and gender/queer theory, an interdisciplinary field that requires attention. I propose a reevaluation of the problems of gender identity along with the intersection of free will and biological determinism and to fill in the gaps in previous thinking surrounding social construction, the self, and personhood—all questions prompted by the gender revolution.

On the Discourse Functions of “nar de hua”

The non-interrogative usage of interrogative pronouns is a common phenomenon across languages which has been noticed for many years. However, there is still much room for the investigation of constructions related to the noninterrogative use of interrogative pronouns. From the interactional perspective, this paper discusses the distribution of the discourse marker “nar de hua” in dialogue, and explores its discourse function, forming mechanism as well as motivation. According to the different semantic intensities of negative assessment in a specific context, the discourse functions of “nar de hua” can be summarized as a continuum: accident, reminder, disaffirmation, refutation and reprimand. In addition, “nar de hua” is often used as a polite expression to express the speaker's modest attitude or respect for others. The negative orientation of “nar de hua” is mainly driven by subjectivity, and it is still in a dynamic development process from doubt to negation.

Pronominal Subject Expression in Spoken Modern Hebrew: A Diachronic Perspective

Abstract As a consequence of the sociolinguistic circumstances of its emergence, the morpho-syntactic profile of Modern Hebrew (MH) originates in several sources – classical layers of Hebrew, pre-existing written practices, contact-induced influence of the native languages of the early MH speakers and internal linguistic developments. Adopting a diachronic corpus-based perspective, the present study focuses on one morpho-syntactic feature, the distribution of first and second person free subject pronouns with suffix (qaṭal) and prefix ( yiqṭol) conjugation verbs. In contrast to the mainly synchronic studies of that feature in MH, the starting point of the present study is data extracted from historical recordings documenting the spontaneous speech of four generations of MH speakers over more than 50 years. Our data indicate two opposite trends: On the one hand, there is a relative stability in the rates of free pronoun usage from the 1960s until the 2010s in two aspects: the near obligatory presence of the free 1SG pronoun ani in the prefix-conjugation, and the relatively low rates of free pronouns in the remaining persons. On the other hand, a significant decrease in the use of the 1SG pronoun ani in the suffix-conjugation was found throughout the years.1

Three Texts, One Applicant—Identities Constructed in Taoci Email Communication

This research taps into the identity construction in “Taoci” email, a discursive practice popular among Chinese study-abroad applicants. Following a qualitative approach, we focus on one Chinese student’s emails to the same American professor. English Taoci emails and interviews have been collected as research data. Detailed linguistic analysis has been proceeded with the distinctive linguistic features of pronoun usage, “pronoun+predicate” pattern, evaluative vocabulary, discourse content and speech acts. Three relational identities have been found:  I(maxium) identity, I(to you) identity, and I(and you) identity based on the linguistic features. The interview transcripts are used to scaffold the dynamic discursive building in the emails. It is hoped that this study would contribute to discussion on discourse identity and shed light on intercultural student-faculty email communication in the e-world.

#MeToo as an ‘angry mob’ or in search of meaning? Using language to assess the focus of #MeToo tweets across four events

The Twitter #MeToo movement has been characterized as an angry mob, out for revenge. However, several lines of research warrant a critical evaluation of this characterization: (1) social movements are often delegitimized; (2) anger is an inconsistent response to sexual assault; and (3) preliminary evidence suggests a focus of #MeToo was meaning-making. To evaluate the focus of #MeToo, the language of tweets was assessed across four sequential events, each associated with peak usage of the hashtag. Three mixed measures ANOVAs showed there were more cognitive than emotion words, suggesting a greater thought-than anger-focus. The patterns of first versus third-person pronoun usage differed at the first event compared to the last event, consistent with a change in focus from meaning-making to meaning-made. Power words were accompanied by more first-person singular pronouns than first-person plural pronouns at all events, suggesting tweeters were focused more on personal empowerment, than attaining power over others. We conclude that #MeToo language was not focused on anger and revenge, but on personal empowerment and meaning-making, and that examining the language of social media movements can help to understand whether criticisms of these movements are evidence-based, or backlash.

Pronoun beta and ose in Moluccas Malay

Moluccas Malay is generally spoken in Moluccas and North Moluccas Provinces. However, every place in those provinces has its own different vocabulary usage of the language like in Tanimbar Archipelago Regency. One of the differences can be seen by the usage of pronouns, especially the first person singular beta and the second person singular ose. In Tanimbar, beta is usually changed to saya and sa, while ose is usually changed to kau, engko, itrana, and itwata. In another place like Ambon, ose is sometimes changed to ale. In addition to regional differences, different situations also affect changes in the use of the two pronouns. This is analyzed by using the acronym SPEAKING in anthropological linguistics to be able to find out the speech situation such as place, time, speaker and addressee, purpose, act sequence of the speech, and others. Research data were collected using observation, interview, and documentation techniques which were then analyzed using data reduction, data display, and data conclusion. The results showed that the rules for using the pronouns beta and ose depend on different situations such as in the family when meeting new people, differences in age, gender, social groups.

The role of algorithms in enhancing the effectiveness of studying pronouns in the 6th form: the semantic and grammatical-orthographic aspects. Part 1. Lexicogrammatical classes of pronouns and their correlation with the nominal parts of speech

The paper aims to outline the role of algorithms in improving the effectiveness of studying pronouns at school level. The study demonstrates the correlation between the lexico-grammatical classes of pronouns and the nominal parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, and numerals). The focus of analysis is the grammatical features, declension, and spelling of pronouns. Additionally, the basic spellings and usage of pronouns with prepositions are analysed. The research uses the technique of structuring and processing grammatical material in the form of diagrams, tables, algorithms which are created in the classroom. Thus, they facilitate a successful acquisition of the grammatical material on the syllabus. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology for studying pronouns was proved during a research and methodological investigation. This conclusion is valid as sixth formers learnt to 1) view pronouns in conjunction with their general grammatical meaning; 2) distinguish the morphological features of pronouns; 3) classify pronouns according to their semantic affinity with the nominal parts of speech; 4) decline pronouns and build normative grammatical forms of words; 5) classify the lexico-grammatical classes of pronouns in accordance with their correlation to the nominal parts of speech; 6) identify grammatical homonyms among lexico-grammatical classes of pronouns. The paper substantiates the practicality of the algorithmic approach to teaching the above-mentioned grammatical material in the 6th form. This is evidenced by schoolchildren’s ability to differentiate between pronouns and other parts of speech, discern morphological errors while building word forms and correct them in compliance with algorithms.

RENDERING ENGLISH FICTION INDEFINITE PRONOUNS INTO UKRAINIAN: A CORPUS APPROACH

The paper deals with an investigation into the usage of English indefinite nominal pronouns in modern fictional discourse and the specificity of their rendering into Ukrainian with employment of corpus approach. The pronouns under study have been selected by the entire sampling method from the complete register compiled on the basis of the novel by J.K. Rowling “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and its Ukrainian version translated by V. Morozov. There have been determined the semantic structures of nine English indefinite pronouns based on their formal characteristics and the dictionary entries’ analysis. The units under analysis have been divided into three structural-semantic types according to their form and meaning, wherein two semantic subtypes have been distinguished. The lexemes of each of type have been distributed in decreasing sequence on a zero-ten frequency scale. There have been calculated the expected frequencies per 1,000 words for each of the types to suggest the probability of their usage in a text. The most frequent and the least frequent indefinite pronouns and pronoun types have been revealed, as well as the lexemes possessing medium frequencies. It has been identified that pronouns with 'some' are of highest frequency when pronouns with 'ever’ – the lowest, and pronouns with 'any’ are in between. The most frequent is the pronoun ‘something’, the least frequent is the pronoun ‘whoever’. Pronouns ‘anyone’ and ‘someone’ have demonstrated the average frequency in the microcorpus under analysis. With the use of the immediate constituents’ analysis and contextual analysis there have been revealed the peculiarities of the pronouns’ usage in the source text. Based on the transformational analysis there have been specified the translation methods and types of translation shifts employed for adequate rendering of the pronouns into Ukrainian. The most common methods of the analysed pronouns’ translation have been proved to be equivalent translation, omission, addition, lexical and lexico-grammatical replacements, with additions and grammatical shifts.

RENDERING ENGLISH FICTION INDEFINITE PRONOUNS INTO UKRAINIAN: A CORPUS APPROACH

The paper deals with an investigation into the usage of English indefinite nominal pronouns in modern fictional discourse and the specificity of their rendering into Ukrainian with employment of corpus approach. The pronouns under study have been selected by the entire sampling method from the complete register compiled on the basis of the novel by J.K. Rowling “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and its Ukrainian version translated by V. Morozov. There have been determined the semantic structures of nine English indefinite pronouns based on their formal characteristics and the dictionary entries’ analysis. The units under analysis have been divided into three structural-semantic types according to their form and meaning, wherein two semantic subtypes have been distinguished. The lexemes of each of type have been distributed in decreasing sequence on a zero-ten frequency scale. There have been calculated the expected frequencies per 1,000 words for each of the types to suggest the probability of their usage in a text. The most frequent and the least frequent indefinite pronouns and pronoun types have been revealed, as well as the lexemes possessing medium frequencies. It has been identified that pronouns with 'some' are of highest frequency when pronouns with 'ever’ – the lowest, and pronouns with 'any’ are in between. The most frequent is the pronoun ‘something’, the least frequent is the pronoun ‘whoever’. Pronouns ‘anyone’ and ‘someone’ have demonstrated the average frequency in the microcorpus under analysis. With the use of the immediate constituents’ analysis and contextual analysis there have been revealed the peculiarities of the pronouns’ usage in the source text. Based on the transformational analysis there have been specified the translation methods and types of translation shifts employed for adequate rendering of the pronouns into Ukrainian. The most common methods of the analysed pronouns’ translation have been proved to be equivalent translation, omission, addition, lexical and lexico-grammatical replacements, with additions and grammatical shifts.

Grammatical Errors in the Expository Essays of Public Health Students of Njala University

The purpose of this study was to identify and analyse the grammatical errors in the expository essay of second year students pursuing a programme of study leading to the Bachelor of Science degree in Public Health at the Njala University, Bo Campus. 100 students were randomly selected from among 190 students of the same class who wrote the test on a subject matter that falls within their domain. Errors were identified and categorized into ten: verb usage, noun usage, punctuation marks, spellings, wrong words, capitalization, pronoun usage, prepositions, abbreviations/coinages and articles. To ascertain the percentage and mean score of each error category, descriptive statistics was used. Using this criterion, five error areas: verb usage, punctuation marks, spellings, wrong words and capitalisation were identified to be significant because of mean scores exceeding 2.0 in each case. The remaining error categories were not significant but show that the students have problem using them correctly in expressing their ideas in written form. Most of the errors made were as a result of overgeneralisation of grammatical rules, L1 interference and ignorance of many rules of English Grammar, and the inability of second language learners to construct the forms of the target language because of inadequate exposure to the target language. These error problems would only be overcome if the learners are adequately exposed to the grammar of English from primary school to university, and if they also adopt favourable attitude towards the learning of English.

Supplemental Material for “I” Am More Concrete Than “We”: Linguistic Abstraction and First-Person Pronoun Usage

Supplemental Material for “I” Am More Concrete Than “We”: Linguistic Abstraction and First-Person Pronoun Usage

Türkçede görme algı eylemleri ve kesinlik derecelenmesi: Görünmek ve gözükmek

This study aims at describing the meaning extensions and functions of the object-oriented see type verbs ‘görünmek’ and ‘gözükmek’ in Turkish in terms of the evidential status and epistemic stance they encode. The observations of this research are based on corpora obtained from Turkish National Corpus.The results indicate that görün- and gözük- share some common features in terms of their functions in discourse. They are both used evidentially with indirect evidence. TNC corpus in general shows that görün- in Turkish presents a dichotomous structure from subjective to intersubjective forms. The subjective forms ‘görün-, gibi görün’ have the highest usage of the objective personal pronoun ‘bana’ and the possessive form ‘gözüme’ indicating the involvement of the speakers/writers to the situation presented. When speakers/writers present their utterances in intersubjective point of view, they prefer the parenthetical forms such as ‘görünen o ki’ without any objective personal pronouns involved. This suggests that speakers/writers do not take the responsibility of the truthiness of their utterances in intersubjective mode.

ПРАГМАТИЧНИЙ ПОТЕНЦІАЛ АНГЛОМОВНИХ TED-ЛЕКЦІЙ НА ЕКОЛОГІЧНУ ТЕМАТИКУ ТА ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ЙОГО ВІДТВОРЕННЯ УКРАЇНСЬКОЮ МОВОЮ

TED has become one of the most popular platforms where speakers can share ideas worth spreading. Scientists and activists use this new kind of public speaking for sharing information about the ecological problems worldwide. Since TED-talks on ecological issues are very popular nowadays, linguists are devoting their research to the analysis of pragmatic peculiarities of such speeches and their influence on the listeners, as well as to the description of pragmatic potential transfer of TED-talks into Ukrainian. Pragmatic features of TED-talks on ecological issues can be analyzed through linguistic and extralinguistic features. Linguistic features can be described with the help of phonetics, lexicology, grammar, and syntax. In phonetics, intonation, and the components of rhythmic and melodic aspects of speech (tempo of the speech, pauses, rhythm, speech melody, stress, timbre, and pitch) play an important role in creating needed emotional atmosphere. Such phonetic features also help to attract listeners’ attention. Lexical peculiarities of TED-talks on ecological issues are described through the usage of common lexical units and ecological terminology. Such grammatical features as the usage of pronouns and modal verbs help to create a bond between the speaker and the audience, as well as to strengthen the pragmatic effect of the speech. Syntactic features are described through the usage of complex and extended sentences, first conditionals, simple sentences, rhetorical sentences, and parallel constructions. Extralinguistic peculiarities of TED-talks on ecological issues include non-verbal means of communication, appearance of the speaker and visual materials. All these linguistic and extralinguistic features form the pragmatic potential of TED-talks that translators must save while translating such public speeches into Ukrainian.

Gendered Pronouns in Chinese EL2 Speech: The Case of Epicene Pronouns

This paper presents an exploratory study on the usage of epicene pronouns in the speech of Chinese EL2 students, who were undertaking a Master’s programme in the UK. The reasons for speakers’ use or non-use of epicene pronouns is also explored to provide a fuller picture of the speakers’ usage as well as their perceptions of gender-inclusive pronouns. An elicitation based speaking task was used to gather epicene pronoun usage. This was followed by a semi-structured interview utilizing stimulated recall techniques to gather data on the participants’ reasons for use or non-use of epicene pronouns as well as their perceptions of gender-inclusive pronouns. The findings showed that singular they was the epicene pronoun used most often, with the reason being that the participants were imagining a group of people. The avoidance strategy employed most often by participants was usage of the pronoun you, and the participants’ reasoning was that it made the response more personal for the listener. Regarding the different antecedent types, there was a higher number of avoidance strategies used with notionally plural antecedents. On the other hand, notionally singular antecedents were found to have a higher number of epicene pronouns used. For EL2 educators, these findings can inform the introduction of epicene pronouns to students.

Do Words Matter? Detecting Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults Using Natural Language Processing.

Introduction: Social isolation and loneliness (SI/L) are growing problems with serious health implications for older adults, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined transcripts from semi-structured interviews with 97 older adults (mean age 83 years) to identify linguistic features of SI/L.Methods: Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods were used to identify relevant interview segments (responses to specific questions), extract the type and number of social contacts and linguistic features such as sentiment, parts-of-speech, and syntactic complexity. We examined: (1) associations of NLP-derived assessments of social relationships and linguistic features with validated self-report assessments of social support and loneliness; and (2) important linguistic features for detecting individuals with higher level of SI/L by using machine learning (ML) models.Results: NLP-derived assessments of social relationships were associated with self-reported assessments of social support and loneliness, though these associations were stronger in women than in men. Usage of first-person plural pronouns was negatively associated with loneliness in women and positively associated with emotional support in men. ML analysis using leave-one-out methodology showed good performance (F1 = 0.73, AUC = 0.75, specificity = 0.76, and sensitivity = 0.69) of the binary classification models in detecting individuals with higher level of SI/L. Comparable performance were also observed when classifying social and emotional support measures. Using ML models, we identified several linguistic features (including use of first-person plural pronouns, sentiment, sentence complexity, and sentence similarity) that most strongly predicted scores on scales for loneliness and social support.Discussion: Linguistic data can provide unique insights into SI/L among older adults beyond scale-based assessments, though there are consistent gender differences. Future research studies that incorporate diverse linguistic features as well as other behavioral data-streams may be better able to capture the complexity of social functioning in older adults and identification of target subpopulations for future interventions. Given the novelty, use of NLP should include prospective consideration of bias, fairness, accountability, and related ethical and social implications.

Social contexts of the pronoun usage in Balinese

There are a number of previous studies on the grammatical aspects of Balinese have been done, however, specific studies that deal with the social aspects of the language are still lacking. This research fulfils this gap and can be utilized in developing materials for teaching and learning Balinese. In this way, the interaction of linguistic research and language teaching and learning can be put into practice. Context in language use is very important. An utterance in one language has functions other than referential; the stylistic shifts of the utterance often mark different social relationships. Balinese is a language that employs speech styles or levels. The principal purpose of this research is to study the impact of the traditional social class which is known as the caste system on pronoun usage in Balinese. This study is a descriptive-qualitative study. It was conducted by observing the uses of pronouns found in Balinese written texts and the analysis and discussion are done descriptively. The results of the data analysis showed that the traditional caste system is significant in determining the choice of pronouns in Balinese.