Prescriptive Grammar and Gender-neutral Pronouns 01/09/11
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Laura Paterson Department of English and Drama School of English Loughborough University University of Leeds [email protected]
Transcript of Prescriptive Grammar and Gender-neutral Pronouns 01/09/11
Laura PatersonDepartment of English and Drama School of EnglishLoughborough University University of [email protected]
Generic he has a long and well documented history in the English language.
“kepe a natural order, and set the man before the woman for manners Sake”
(Wilson, 1560:189).
“words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females… unless the contrary as to gender… is expressly provided”
(Evans and Evans 1957:221).
However, findings in descriptive linguistics have cast doubt on the position of he as a generic pronoun.
Martyna (1980)◦ 72 participants◦ 40% judged that he could not apply to pictures of women
Wilson and Ng (1988)◦ Participants read a sentence aloud and were asked to assign a gender to a subliminal image of a face
◦ Participants who read masculine pronouns claimed that the faces had more masculine than feminine features
Gastil (1990)◦ 93 participants◦ Generic he always evoked more masculine mental images
Sunderland (1986)◦ 22 school grammar text books◦ Published between 1975 and 1985◦ Non-sexist language campaigns viewed negatively
Bodine (1975)◦ 33 American high school grammars◦ Published between 1958 and 1967◦ 28 advised against using singular they or combined pronouns
Zuber and Reed (1993)◦ Grammars published in the 1980s and early 1990s◦ Returned to a more prescriptive view of singular they
Grammar writers ignore “the professional literature in linguistics… which for several decades has indicated the discrepancy between actual linguistic practice and the handbook proscriptions” (Zuber and Reed 1993:527).
“By ignoring linguistic knowledge, prescriptivism has remained narrow, uninformed, and unprincipled, following arbitrary, unconscious or poorly formulated criteria and biases rather than general rules or principles” (MacKay 1980:350).
Graham (1973)◦ Corpus for the American Heritage School Dictionary◦ Pronoun ration masculine:feminine = 4:1◦ 32/940 tokens of he could potentially be considered generic
Generic he warrants an A+ (Silveria 1980) although it is “perhaps ‘sexually biased’” (Cook and Suter 1980).
Twenty grammars aimed at native speakers of English
Published between 2000 and 2010
13 covered the topic of epicene pronouns
When epicenes were covered they were deliniated from the rest of the text in some way
The graphological salience of the topic indicating that epicenes are a point of contention in English grammar
Endorsed◦ Use of a pronoun was mandated or expressed as an imperative
◦ “use he throughout” (Text 12)
Dismissed◦ The pronoun is explicitly mentioned but proscribed
◦ “many people dislike this” (Text 2)◦ “no longer appropriate” (Text 17)
Did not consider
NOTED ENDORSED DISMISSED
GENERIC HE 11 1 11
SINGULAR THEY
12 10 7
Table 1: Singular they and generic he in the grammar corpus
PLURALISATION
COMBINED PRONOUNS
GENERIC SHE
REWORK SENTENCE
TOTAL
NO. 6 10 2 4 22
% 27.27 45.45 9.10 18.18
Table 2: Alternatives to epicenes
A) the pronoun is classed as traditional
B) the pronoun is opposed due to arguments associated with feminism or feminists
C) the pronoun is rejected on the grounds of sexism in terms of general agency, and by reference to generic people
D) the pronoun is rejected due to political correctness using a passive construction and eliminating agency
The discussion of epicene pronouns is relatively common in modern grammars
Generic he is overwhelmingly rejected
Yet the explicit endorsement of an epicene candidate is rare
Epicene avoidance tactics predominate in the corpus
Previous studies have shown the dominance of generic he
My data indicates that this is no longer the case
Potentially then, descriptive linguistics has begun to have an impact upon grammar book prescriptions
Baranowski, Maciei. 2002. Current usage of the epicene pronoun in written English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(3): 378-397.
Bodine, Anne. 1975. Androcentrism is prescriptive grammar: Singular “they”, sex-indefinite “he”, and “he or she”. Language in Society 4: 129-146.
Cook, Stanley J. and Richard W. Suter. 1980. The Scope of Grammar: A Study of Modern English. New York: McGraw.
Dawson, Mary Wood. 1956. The passing of the pronoun. English Journal 45(1): 34-37.
Evans, B and C. Evans. 1957. A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage. New York: Random House.
Gastil, John. 1990. Generic pronouns and sexist language – the oxymoronic character of masculine generics. Sex Roles 23(11-12): 629-643.
Graham, Alma. 1973. The making of a nonsexist dictionary. Reprinted in B. Thorne and N. M. Henley (Eds.). 1975. Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House.
MacKay, Donald G. 1980. Psychology, prescriptive grammar and the pronoun problem. American Psychologist 35: 444-449.
Martyna, Wendy. 1980. The psychology of the generic masculine. In Sally McConnell-Ginet, Ruth Borker and Nelly Furman (Eds.). Women and Language in Literature and Society. New York: Praeger. pp 69-78.
Meyers, Miriam Watkins. 1990. Current generic pronoun usage: An empirical study. American Speech 65: 228-237.
Mucchi-Faina, A. 2005. Visible or influential? Language reforms and gender (in)equality. Social Science Information 44(1): 189-215.
Pauwels, Anne. 1998. Women Changing Language. London: Longman. Silveria, Jeanette. 1980. Generic masculine words and thinking.
Women Studies International Quarterly 3: 165-178.Sunderland, Jane. 1986. The grammar book and the invisible woman.
Unpublished MA Thesis, Lancaster University.Wilson, Elizabeth and Sik H. Ng. 1988. Sex bias in visuals evoked
by generics: A New Zealand study. Sex Roles 18: 159-168.Wilson, T. 1560 [1553]. Arte of Rhetorique. Gainsville: Scholars
Facsimiles and Reprints.Wolfe, Susan J. 1989. The reconstruction of word meanings: A
review of the scholarship. In Francine Frank and Paula Treichler (Eds.). Language, Gender and Professional Writing. New York: Modern Language Association of America. pp 80-94.
Zuber, Sharon and Ann M. Reed. 1993. The politics of grammar handbooks: Generic he and singular they. College English 55(5): 515-530.
