15.1 Gender-Neutral Language and Pronouns

Gender-Neutral Pronouns

Singular They and Its Usage

Singular "they" is a pronoun used to refer to a person whose gender is unknown, irrelevant, or non-binary. It's one of the most discussed topics in modern English usage because it sits right at the intersection of grammar tradition and social change.

Despite what some critics claim, singular "they" isn't new. It dates back to Middle English, and you can find examples in Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing) and Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice). For centuries, English speakers have naturally reached for "they" when referring to an unspecified person.

• Unspecified gender: Someone left their umbrella. (You don't know who, so "their" feels natural.)
• Non-binary identity: Some individuals who don't identify as male or female use "they/them" as their personal pronouns.
• Avoiding awkwardness: Singular "they" sidesteps clunky constructions like "he or she" or "his/her."

Major style guides now accept singular "they" in specific contexts. The APA (7th edition) endorses it both for people who use "they" as their pronoun and for generic third-person references. The Chicago Manual of Style accepts it in informal contexts and permits it for individuals who identify with "they." Acceptance in formal writing is growing but still varies by publication and institution.

Epicene Pronouns and Their Function

Epicene pronouns are existing English pronouns that already carry no gender. They aren't new coinages; they're words English has had for a long time that happen to work as gender-neutral options.

The most common epicene pronouns include:

• "One" — Used in formal or academic writing for hypothetical situations. One must consider all options before deciding. It sounds stiff in casual speech, but it's useful in essays.
• "Who" — A relative pronoun that applies to any gender. The person who left their umbrella should check the front desk.
• "It" — Typically reserved for objects and animals. Using "it" for a person is generally considered disrespectful, though it occasionally appears in reference to infants in some dialects.

Epicene pronouns help writers avoid the "he or she" problem, but each has limitations. "One" can sound overly formal, and repeating it gets awkward fast (One should do one's best to mind one's business). That's part of why singular "they" has gained so much ground as an alternative.

Neopronouns and Their Development

Neopronouns are pronouns coined specifically to serve as gender-neutral alternatives. They go beyond singular "they" by offering options that some users feel are more personal or precise.

Common neopronouns include:

• xe/xem/xyr — Xe went to the store. I called xem yesterday.
• ze/zir/zirs — Ze finished zir homework.
• ey/em/eir — Ey said it was eir decision.

The idea isn't actually new. One of the earliest neopronouns, "thon" (a blend of "that" and "one"), was proposed in 1858 and even appeared in some dictionaries. What's changed is the social context: growing recognition of non-binary identities has renewed interest in these options.

Neopronouns face real barriers to widespread adoption. Most English speakers are unfamiliar with them, and they require learning entirely new word forms, which is harder than repurposing an existing word like "they." Their use is most common within LGBTQ+ communities and in online spaces, and they remain rare in mainstream published writing.

Gender and Language

Gender-Inclusive Language Practices

Gender-inclusive language means choosing words that don't default to one gender when you're talking about people in general. The goal is to make language reflect the reality that not everyone in a given role or group is male (or female).

This shows up most clearly in job titles and forms of address:

• Job titles: chairperson instead of chairman, flight attendant instead of stewardess, firefighter instead of fireman
• Forms of address: Mx. (pronounced "mix") as an alternative to Mr. or Ms.
• General vocabulary: humankind instead of mankind, first-year student instead of freshman

A practical writing strategy is to use plural forms to avoid gendered singular pronouns altogether. Instead of A student should bring his textbook, you can write Students should bring their textbooks. This sidesteps the pronoun question entirely and often produces cleaner sentences.

The Gender Binary and Its Linguistic Impact

The gender binary is the idea that gender falls into exactly two categories: male and female. Many languages are built around this assumption, though they encode it differently.

Some languages embed gender deeply into their grammar. In Spanish and French, every noun has grammatical gender, and adjectives must agree with it. English is comparatively light on grammatical gender. It shows up mainly in:

• Pronouns: he/she, him/her, his/hers
• A handful of nouns: actor/actress, waiter/waitress, prince/princess

The tension arises when people who identify outside the binary encounter a language system that assumes everyone fits into one of two categories. Much of the current debate about gender-neutral language is about whether and how to modify these binary structures. Solutions range from adopting singular "they" to creating new titles like Mx. to, in other languages, proposing entirely new grammatical forms (like Latinx or elle in Spanish).

Language Evolution in Response to Gender Awareness

Languages change constantly, and shifts in social awareness are one of the forces that drive that change. Gender-related language evolution is a clear example of this process in action.

Some changes involve old terms falling out of use. Words like authoress, poetess, and aviatrix were once standard but now sound dated because the assumption that a default author is male (and a female one needs a special suffix) no longer holds. Other changes involve new vocabulary entering the language: terms like cisgender (identifying with the gender assigned at birth), non-binary, and genderqueer didn't exist in mainstream usage a few decades ago.

Not everyone welcomes these shifts. Resistance to language change is common and often intense, which connects directly to the prescriptivism vs. descriptivism debate covered below.

Approaches to Language Change

Linguistic Prescriptivism and Its Principles

Linguistic prescriptivism is the view that there are correct and incorrect ways to use language, and that rules should be followed to maintain clarity and consistency. Prescriptivists look to established grammar rules, style guides, and traditional usage as their authority.

In the gender-neutral language debate, prescriptivists often raise concerns like:

• Singular "they" creates subject-verb agreement confusion.
• Neopronouns aren't "real" words because they haven't been organically adopted by most speakers.
• Changing established terms disrupts clear communication.

Prescriptivism has historically dominated education and formal writing. It's the reason you were probably told never to use "they" for a single person in school. Critics of prescriptivism argue that it can privilege the language patterns of dominant social groups and treat natural language evolution as error. A prescriptivist stance doesn't automatically mean opposition to gender-neutral language, though. Some prescriptivists simply want any new usage to be codified in style guides before they adopt it, and many guides have now done exactly that.

Linguistic Descriptivism and Its Methodology

Linguistic descriptivism takes a different approach: instead of dictating how language should be used, it observes and documents how language is used. Descriptivists treat language change as a natural, ongoing process rather than a problem to be corrected.

From a descriptivist perspective:

• If millions of speakers use singular "they," that usage is a legitimate feature of English, not an error.
• Multiple dialects and varieties of English are equally valid systems, not corruptions of a "standard."
• The job of linguists is to study and record language patterns, not to judge them.

Descriptivism informs modern dictionary-making (lexicography) and corpus linguistics, which analyzes large databases of real-world text to track how words are actually being used. When Merriam-Webster added a singular "they" entry in 2019, that was a descriptivist move: documenting established usage rather than inventing a rule.