[291/365] non-binary pronouns

[cosmolinguist]

I've had conversations in a f-locked DW post, on Mastodon, and in real life this morning about non-binary people's pronouns from a linguistic angle. I said in the DW comments that I'm starting to think this is what my non-existent MA would be on, if it existed.

Either how gendered languages are dealing with them (the real-life conversation was with a German major telling me the state of things in that language), or how they/them won out in English over ey/em or zie/hir or other contenders (I saw those others called Betamax and I think that's a perfect analogy because I actually think they're better than singular-they).

Pronouns are a closed class so by definition they don't really change and so it's syntactically interesting when they do (this is why because won "word of the year" a few years ago: usually that title goes to a new word, which this obviously isn't, but it was such a new use of an old word, a closed-class word, that it delighted the linguists). Changes in a closed class are a pretty fundamental language change, and this one reflects a similarly profound need that language users have.

And this morning I read this too and loved it:

I thought that non-binary was something for westerners and not for Iranians....

In Persian language, nouns are not divided into genders, but living beings and non-living beings. “U” is the Persian pronoun for living beings regardless of gender. My pronoun, ultimately, is U. I’m not traumatized by “he” because it was never really my pronoun, it was used for me only in translation. My pronoun has always been gender-neutral.

Persian language is quite welcoming to non-binary people. I tend to think that when the concept of non-binary finds its way into Iranian collective consciousness, other non-binary people will be as grateful to this humble Persian pronoun as I am. And that warms my heart.

The extent to which non-binary identities are European, and white, will have linguistic implications too. Man that would be such a good subject to dive into.

That article also contains one of the best, simplest explanations I've encountered for why we need pronouns beyond he and she: "A pronoun is meant to represent the noun, and it’s painful to be represented by something that’s intrinsically not who you are."

Comments

[strange_complex]

Will you be doing an undergraduate dissertation this year? If so, couldn't that be on gender and pronouns? You seem really interested in it and I think are in a perfect position to do it. It would seem like a waste not to!

[cosmolinguist]

I'm not doing a dissertation, no. I'd have had to start already and I didn't/don't have the spoons for that.

[strange_complex]

Fair enough! Hence also feeling that you don't want to undertake a Masters, presumably. Still, I hope you'll keep thinking about it, and maybe writing your thoughts here.

[cosmolinguist]

I'd love to do a masters but I went back to uni with the aim of getting some more money into my multiply disabled household rather than taking more money out of it. :)

[wildeabandon]

This is a bit of an aside although related to the final paragraph - in your profile it says "all pronouns welcome" - does that include he and/or she, or do you prefer more obviously non-binary ones?

I was really interested in the thread of that conversation about whether different sets of neopronouns had different commonly understood connotations, or whether it was simply a case of individuals' sense that "this set of sounds feels like the best fit for my own sense of gender".

[cosmolinguist]

Yep that includes he and she. Most people still use she for me and that's fine. Thanks for asking.

[silveradept]

There's probably a lot of research papers that could be written on these ideas. Living-nonliving divides, the idea that "they" might have won because it was the easiest linguistic shift to make, and how some languages are getting suggestions on how to add nonbinary and all-gender inclusive pronouns, and what that does when adjectives are expected to agree on number and gender. It's interesting to watch language change.