Nonnative English learners’ use and understanding of singular<i>they</i>

LaScotte, Darren K.

doi:10.1080/09658416.2020.1869753

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Furthermore, the previous literature also proposed the impacts of education on gender egalitarianism [4]. Moreover, previous research further illustrates the evidence of gender bias in writing, particularly in the aspect of the difference between male and female students [8,9,10].…”

Section: Results Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 58%

Gender bias in L2 writing for Chinese international students

Mao

2023

EHSS

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This research is based on the background of the relationship between gender ideology formation and language use in writing. Through reviewing previous studies exploring gender ideology formation, L2 learners’ gender ideology, and gender ideology in China, a research gap targeting the international student population is found under-investigated. International students’ gender ideology would considerably affect future gender ideologies on a global scale. Therefore, this research analysed gender bias in L2 writing for Chinese international students through an academic writing question and semi-structural interviews for five Chinese international students who are studying in Australia. The results suggest that L2 learners’ gender ideology is hard to be changed due to the influential factors of their living environment; L2 learners’ gender ideology can differ in their subject disciplines; and there is no more female-prone language in L2 female learners than L2 male learners.

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Section: Results Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 58%

Gender bias in L2 writing for Chinese international students

Mao

2023

EHSS

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“…While some L1 groups conceptualized the singular they as a separate pronoun from the plural they-especially in antecedents with notional plurality-some other L1 groups only accepted the generic he. This finding was further confirmed by LaScotte (2021). Via a small-scale online writing survey, LaScotte found that some international English-as-a-secondlanguage (ESL) students used the singular they in their writing, but a large number of them preferred to use the generic he, and a very large number misidentified the antecedent of the singular they in the given context.…”

Section: L2 Acquisition Of the Singular Theymentioning

confidence: 76%

“…Secondly, it has been found that the difficulty in acquiring the singular they also involves the adaptation to the sociocultural norms of the target language. LaScotte (2021) has provided a suggestion for helping with this. “Teachers should address the reality that there are many who identify as neither he nor she ” (p. 93).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They are homophones derived by adding the plural marker 们 [ mén ] to the two separate singular third-person pronouns, namely, 他 [ tā — he ] and 她 [ tā — she ] ( Qiu, 2013 ). What is especially notable is that the English plural pronoun, they , has emerged as a gender-neutral pronoun and has become the pronoun of choice of English speakers when referring to a singular non-gendered antecedent ( LaScotte, 2021 ). In Mandarin, however, no counterpart pronoun can be found.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As for the second type, the major external source of difficulty in acquiring the singular they concerns the limited language input and exposure that a learner can receive. The singular they is not typically taught in textbooks or in classroom settings ( LaScotte, 2021 ). As a result, classroom learners of English do not generally receive sufficient input of the singular they that is needed to develop a robust representation of this form in their grammar ( Speyer and Schleef, 2019 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Acceptance and Online Interpretation of “Gender-Neutral Pronouns”: Performance Asymmetry by Chinese English as a Foreign Language Learners

2022

Front. Psychol.

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The present study (N = 109) set out to examine the role of cross-linguistic differences as a source of potential difficulty in the acceptance and online interpretation of the English singular they by Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners across two levels of second-language proficiency. Experiment 1 operationalized performance through an untimed acceptability judgment test and Experiment 2 through a self-paced reading task. Statistical analyses yielded an asymmetric pattern of results. Experiment 1 indicated that unlike native English speakers who generally accepted the singular they with all antecedent types, two Chinese EFL groups consisting of English majors (higher level) and non-English majors (lower level) both rated it as the least acceptable pronoun regardless of their proficiency level. In contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated that like native English speakers, both Chinese EFL groups were not disrupted in their reading by the use of the singular they most of the time, although its online interpretation was modulated by L2 proficiency levels of the participants. While the English majors were not affected by the use of the singular they, the non-English majors spent a significantly longer time reading the latter region of the sentences where the singular they was used. In short, the results of the two experiments seem to indicate that under no time constraint, L2 speakers showed a heightened degree of grammar sensitivity, whereas when there was a time constraint, their grammatical sensitivity was reduced by a greater need to focus on meaning. The difficulty for Chinese EFL learners to acquire the singular they may be located at the restructuring of their existing knowledge of the plural feature of they [−PLURAL] in their mental lexicon and the adaptation to the sociocultural norms of the target language. The pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.

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Feminism and language

Milles

2022

Handbook of Pragmatics

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Nonnative English learners’ use and understanding of singularthey

Cited by 7 publications

References 15 publications

Gender bias in L2 writing for Chinese international students

Gender bias in L2 writing for Chinese international students

Acceptance and Online Interpretation of “Gender-Neutral Pronouns”: Performance Asymmetry by Chinese English as a Foreign Language Learners

Feminism and language

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