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Monday 7 September 2015

Gendered pronouns and language change

Academically, there is a problem to overcome in analysing texts when you don't know what gender the writer is - 'The writer uses a powerful metaphor: he/she/they uses..?' The use of 'they' is gaining ground but it can be confusing, sound ungrammatical and there are other issues with this 'gap' in our language (Sweden have just filled the same gap in their language by adding 'hen' to 'hon' (she) and 'han' (he)). For example, just like the issue with choosing between Ms/Mr/Mrs/Miss for non-binary gender identities or taking issue with the terms for feminist reasons, read this post on how an American university is dealing with the form-filling all students have to do.

I read a science fiction book at about your age called 'Golden Witchbreed' where the gender of children was not disclosed until puberty and they were all referred to as "ke". Would "ke" work or is "ze", "xe" or something else more convincing?

1 comment:

  1. Or if not those, which of these? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:List_of_protologisms/third_person_singular_gender_neutral_pronouns

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