HE and THEY in indefinite anaphora in written present-day English

Laitinen, Mikko

doi:10.1075/ijcl.7.2.01lai

Cited by 6 publications

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“…This usage pattern obtains in the data of Erdmann (1995) and Laitinen (2002) for written English, and Matossian (1997) and Newman (1997) for spoken.…”

Section: Universal Versus Existential Quantifiersmentioning

confidence: 68%

The Epicene Pronoun in Contemporary Newspaper Prose

Balhorn¹

2009

American Speech

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This article is about the use of plural third-person pronouns with grammatically singular, indefinite, generic antecedents in the prose of current U.S. newspapers. After a review of studies of the statistical prominence of usage patterns such as A criminal is a criminal no matter what they wear in spoken English and the presence of such patterns in written English since the gender-neutral language reform movement of the 1970s, an argument is made for why they is an effective and at times optimal choice as an epicene pronoun. Then, a systematic sampling of pronoun chains in contemporary newspapers is used to investigate the effect of such factors as quoted versus nonquoted text, writers' sex, and antecedent type on rates of they usage relative to two other epicene alternatives: historically prescribed he and currently available he or she. The results indicate that although male and female writers use they at similar rates, females use he less often than males do. The results also indicate that with lexical NP antecedents, both male and female writers exhibit lower rates of they and greater use of the disjunction he or she. This is especially true with sex-stereotyped, occupational NP antecedents, such as a CEO or a doctor. It is argued that this pattern of use in contemporary newspaper prose is because of heightened sensitivity to sexism and because of psycholinguistic factors that allow male but not female writers to see themselves included in a generic he -reference chain.

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“…This usage pattern obtains in the data of Erdmann (1995) and Laitinen (2002) for written English, and Matossian (1997) and Newman (1997) for spoken.…”

Section: Universal Versus Existential Quantifiersmentioning

confidence: 68%

The Epicene Pronoun in Contemporary Newspaper Prose

Balhorn¹

2009

American Speech

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“…The first one, which concerns the anaphoric structures, tests whether one can find patterns of variation in he/they in Early Modern English correspondence that are similar to those in present-day English registers. I have proposed elsewhere that the informal text types increase the writers' tendency to use the plural, whereas formal texts show a statistically significant increase in the singular (Laitinen, 2002). This section dynamizes the present-day situation, exploring the origins of such differences in Early and Late Modern English.…”

Section: Registermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5.I have discussed the indefiniteness requirements in Laitinen (2002; 2006). The criteria are not elaborated further in this article.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sociolinguistic patterns in grammaticalization:He, they, andthosein human indefinite reference

Laitinen

2008

Lang Var Change

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A B S T R A C T Sociolinguistic patterns in language change are largely based on generalizations from linguistic variables consisting of lexemes or morphemes. This article takes a diachronic, corpus-based approach to the diffusion of a change in a more extensive morphosemantic function consisting of several linguistic subsystems. It focuses on the pronoun variants he, they, and those used for human indefiniteness in two contexts: (a) epicene anaphoric uses with indefinite pronouns and (b) cataphoric personal references. The quantitative corpus analyses show that the pronoun selection in Early and Late Modern English developed a greater tendency to use one pronoun type over the other in both contexts. The main data come from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence and its Extension. Statistical analyses compare the observed correlations of the pronouns with a set of social, external variables and language-internal factors. This article concludes that it is possible to establish sociolinguistic patterns in larger shifts if we account for the closely related internal developments in the language.In his discussion of sociolinguistic variation, Labov (2001) suggests that it would be surprising if abstract levels of grammar, such as large-scale typological changes in a language, exhibited sociolinguistic patterns found in socially evaluated variables. At the same time, he suggests that stable sociolinguistic variables, which may persist over several generations of speakers, are typically "located at an intermediate level of structure . . . [like] the use of allophones or allomorphs in a particular structural context" (2001:83).This article concentrates on these two proposals and examines them using diachronic corpus data. I have two underlying themes that can be outlined as follows. (a) Tackling Labov's notion of sociolinguistic patterns in large-scale changes, I concentrate on one abstract morphosemantic function in English, human indefinite reference in the pronouns he, they, and those. I suggest that the use of the pronominal forms with which this function was coded through time constitutes a change in the typological tendencies in English, and I examine the extent to which one can establish sociolinguistic patterns in its diachronic development. My interest is social diffusion of the variants, which are elaborated

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“…The choice of any of these pronouns is closely related to democratization processes in that generic he is considered sexist and the result of androcentric grammar (e.g., Bodine 1975), while he or she and singular they have long been proscribed in prescriptive grammar as either clumsy and pedantic, or just illogical, respectively (Bodine 1975:133). Despite prescriptivism, however, democratic (i.e., non-androcentric and egalitarian) options such as he or she and singular they have recently gained ground in inner-circle varieties of English (e.g., Pauwels 2001 for Australian English, AusE; Laitinen 2002 and Paterson 2014 for British English, BrE; Balhorn 2009 and LaScotte 2016 for American English, AmE). 2 Generic she (used to refer to the neutral term a busy parent in 1), on the other hand, is marginal (e.g., Laitinen 2002:160; LaScotte 2016:66, 67) and, for that reason, it will be omitted from this study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Un)democratic Epicene Pronouns in Asian Englishes: A Register Approach

Loureiro‐Porto

2020

Journal of English Linguistics

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The search for gender equality in language use is one of the most frequently cited cases of linguistic democratization (e.g., Farrelly & Seoane 2012:394). At the grammatical level, this process implies, for example, that pronouns such as generic he used with epicene antecedents are being replaced by singular they or by combined he or she, at least in inner-circle varieties of English. However, outer-circle varieties remain underexplored in this regard. For this reason, this paper analyzes three Asian English varieties, namely Hong Kong English (HKE), Indian English (IndE), and Singapore English (SgE), based on the relevant ICE corpora. More than 58,000 examples were retrieved from the corpora and manually filtered, resulting in 2120 tokens of epicene pronouns. The results show a very different picture for each variety. While overall HKE shows a high preference for the more democratic options they and he or she, IndE and SgE exhibit different patterns. IndE shows singular they in speech, but it is almost non-existent in writing, while in SgE there is a sharp contrast between the most spontaneous spoken register and all other registers. After testing different hypotheses, the findings are explained in socio-cultural terms, as a result of democratization possibly related to women’s movements in those territories.

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HE and THEY in indefinite anaphora in written present-day English

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

The Epicene Pronoun in Contemporary Newspaper Prose

The Epicene Pronoun in Contemporary Newspaper Prose

Sociolinguistic patterns in grammaticalization:He, they, andthosein human indefinite reference

(Un)democratic Epicene Pronouns in Asian Englishes: A Register Approach

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