{"id":39757,"date":"2018-08-25T12:10:59","date_gmt":"2018-08-25T17:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=39757"},"modified":"2018-08-25T12:15:06","modified_gmt":"2018-08-25T17:15:06","slug":"pronouns-identification-by-paradigm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=39757","title":{"rendered":"Pronouns: identification by paradigm?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A graduate student in classics expresses appreciation for the new norm of academic staff announcing their pronoun preferences, but wonders why everyone gives their preferences as three-element paradigm: <em>she\/her\/hers, he\/him\/his, they\/them\/their<\/em>. It's not like anyone is going to mix and match, <em>she\/him\/their<\/em>\u00a0or whatever.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Two possible answers occur to me. For those who use pronouns not in the familiar set {he, she, they}, people may be puzzled about what the overall paradigm is like. This <a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/lgbtrc\/support\/gender-pronouns\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">card from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee<\/a> gives a (non-exhaustive) sample:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/UWM_PronounGuide.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/myl\/UWM_PronounGuide.png\" width=\"490\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Another possible answer is a desire to make it clear that the traditional case-related forms are OK &#8212; if I said \"My preferred pronoun is <em>he<\/em>\", it might seem that I want people to say \"I saw he yesterday\", or \"He name is Mark\".<\/p>\n<p>In other signs of the pronominal times, this story in the Washington Post refers to a trans man throughout using singular <em>they<\/em>, without any explanation or excuse &#8212;\u00a0Isaac Stanley-Becker, \"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/morning-mix\/wp\/2018\/08\/24\/he-made-me-transgender-on-purpose-breast-removal-surgery-could-boot-mormon-student-from-brigham-young\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u2018He made me transgender on purpose\u2019: Breast-removal surgery could boot Mormon student from Brigham Young<\/a>\", WaPo 8\/24\/2018:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Starting at age 11, they prayed for breast cancer. So distressing were the markers of their femininity that Kris Irvin \u2014 who identifies as a man and uses the pronouns they, them and their \u2014 would have welcomed abnormal cell growth in their \u201ccrappy and dysfunctional body.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Irvin knew of no other remedy for the physical and emotional agony that seemed to intertwine in their breasts, as they knew of no word to describe what they were experiencing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Since they were 3 years old, Irvin said, they were certain that they were male. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t know the word \u2018transgender\u2019 until I was 28,\u201d said Irvin, who is now 31 and a student at Brigham Young University, a school bound so tightly to the Mormon faith that enrollment rests on evaluation by religious leaders. That requirement could place Irvin\u2019s education in jeopardy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A graduate student in classics expresses appreciation for the new norm of academic staff announcing their pronoun preferences, but wonders why everyone gives their preferences as three-element paradigm: she\/her\/hers, he\/him\/his, they\/them\/their. It's not like anyone is going to mix and match, she\/him\/their\u00a0or whatever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-culture","category-usage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39757"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39763,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39757\/revisions\/39763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}