third-person reference again

Some time ago, I did claim I would write some more on the question of gender(-neutrality) and third-person reference using pronouns. My original motivation for writing was that I felt that, in a spirited defence of singular they, the author at Motivated Grammar made a misstep in claiming that invented gender-neutral pronouns add nothing to the language that singular they doesn't already deliver.* The specific linguistic issues of interest to me are how English-speakers are using singular they and invented gender-neutral pronouns such as xe and how far the two co-exist.** The intimately related social issues here are to do with how we gender people when we talk about them, and the role this can have in promoting or resisting sexism, and in making it easier/harder for gender non-conforming people to exist in the (English-speaking) world. In person this might go without saying, but since there are all sorts of people out there on the internet, I should make it clear that I am in favour of resisting sexism, and making our societies more livable places for trans and gender non-conforming people.

Besides a long series of posts on language log about singular they, I have recently read two interesting posts on related subjects: Someone asked me about 'singular they,' and this is what I told them (Language Hippie) and native English epicene pronouns (bradshaw of the future). So in this post I'll just pick up something from the first of those two posts. Here is what the author of the first post has to say about what singular they might be good for.

For example, the speaker may not consider the person’s gender relevant to the present discussion, or they may know that the person does not self-identify within the traditional male-female gender binary (and may thus be uncomfortable being labeled as "he" or "she"). When I find singular they most useful, however, is when the referent’s gender is simply unknown. (Language Hippie)

I thought it was very positive to see someone writing from the linguistic point of view who explicitly acknowledges non-binary gender identities. My feeling (though unsubstantiated) is that, for the most part, linguists -- or, indeed, most people outside of certain communities -- don't take this seriously at all. But if we want to talk about gender in language, we really have to start with a respectful, non-prescriptive, understanding of the range of gender identities and expressions that exist. If we read it uncharitably, though, Language Hippie's account might be overstating how useful they can be. To recycle and expand a previous example of mine (where the underlined part is the antecedent of the bold pronouns):

1. ? I waited an hour for Kim but they never showed up.
2. I waited an hour for Kim but she/he/xe never showed up.

For me, at least, (1) is not really grammatical -- notice that we are putting aside more the more felicitous reading where they refers to Kim and an accompanying person or group of people. In contrast, at least the he and she versions of (2) are uncontroversially acceptable. The xe version is fine for me but it is only fair to note that I am sure some people would object, perhaps strongly, to my judgement here. But I think objections would be based on the status of xe -- i.e. claims that it is not a word in the English language -- rather than something in the grammar of xe that prevents its use in this particular context. So it would seem that they is difficult to use in a sentence like this, even if we want to respect Kim's non-binary gender identity, or don't know how Kim identifies, or to avoid bringing Kim's gender into the conversation, but that xe might offer us a way to do these things.



*My original post quotes Motivated Grammar as saying (in the summary near the end of the post) that those who don't want to use singular they might instead use "he or she, or s/he, or some stupid made-up gender-neutral pronoun of your own devising like xe", but I must add that the word "stupid" is nowhere to be found in the post as now that I look back at it. So I perhaps interpreted this more negatively than the author intended.

**I'll use xe here to stand in for any invented gender-neutral pronoun, of which there at least a lot.