Singular they - Gender-neutral Language Movement

Gender-neutral Language Movement

In the late 20th century, the feminist movement expressed concern regarding the use of generic he in the English language. The feminist claim was that such usage contributes to an assumption that maleness is "standard," and that femaleness is "different". It also claimed that such use is misogynistic. One response to this was an increase in the use of generic she in academic journal articles from around this time. However, the more common response has been prescriptive, with many institutions publishing gender neutral style guides, notably in government, academia and publishing. For example, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (2004) expresses several preferences. "Generic/universal their provides a gender-free pronoun, avoiding the exclusive his and the clumsy his/her."

It avoids gratuitous sexism and gives the statement broadest reference....They, them, their are now freely used in agreement with singular indefinite pronouns and determiners, those with universal implications such as any(one), every(one), no(one), as well as each and some(one), whose reference is often more individual....For those listening or reading, it has become unremarkable—an element of common usage.

The use of masculine generic nouns and pronouns in written and spoken language has decreased since the 1960s. In a corpus of spontaneous speech collected in Australia in the 1990s, singular they had become the most frequently used generic pronoun. The increased usage of singular they may be at least partly due to an increasing desire for gender-neutral language; while writers a hundred years ago might have had no qualm using he with a referent of indeterminate gender, writers today often feel uncomfortable with this. One solution in formal writing has often been to write he or she, or something similar, but this is considered awkward when used excessively, overly politically correct, or both.

In certain contexts, singular they may sound less obtrusive and more natural than generic he, or he or she. One guide offered the following example:

Nobody in their right mind would do a thing like that.

Some usage guides accept or recommend singular uses of they not just in cases where there is an element of semantic plurality expressed by a word such as "everyone" but also where an indeterminate person is referred to, citing examples of such usage even in formal speech. For instance, Casey Miller and Kate Swift, in The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing, quote Ronald Reagan:

"You must identify the person who has the power to hire you and show them how your skills can help them with their problems."

However, use of they for persons of indeterminate gender existed long before the modern gender-neutral language movement; as attested by Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage:

"They are uses following a normal pattern in English that was established four centuries before the 18th-century grammarians invented the solecism."

Examples given are:

• "We can only know an actual person by observing their behaviour in a variety of different situations."
• ". . . unless a person takes a deal of exercise,they may son eat more than does them good."
• "A person can't help their birth"

Singular they is occasionally used to refer to an indeterminate person whose gender is known, as in No mother should be forced to testify against their child.

Some college handbooks, such as The Little, Brown Handbook, continue to view singular they as grammatically inconsistent, and recommend either recasting in the plural or avoiding the pronoun altogether. Others say that there is no sufficient reason not to extend singular they to include specific people of unknown gender, as well as to gender non-conforming, bigender, intersex and androgyne people, and those who do not identify exclusively with either gender.

Some manuals of style remain neutral on the subject while other style manuals explicitly reject the use of singular they in grammar. According to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Society, a pronoun must agree in both gender and number with the noun it replaces. The APA manual offers the following example as "incorrect" reflexive usage:

Neither the highest scorer nor the lowest scorer in the group had any doubt about their competence.

while also specifically taking a stand that generic he is unacceptable (p. 66). The APA recommends using he or she, recasting the sentence with a plural subject to allow correct use of they, or simply rewriting the sentence to avoid issues with gender or number.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) also maintains that pronouns must agree in number with their antecedents, and that the singular they is incorrect usage.