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Current usage of the epicene pronoun in written English[Note 1. I am indebted to Sherry Ash for guidance and ...]
Author(s) -
Baranowski Maciej
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of sociolinguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9841
pISSN - 1360-6441
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9481.00193
Subject(s) - pronoun , referent , antecedent (behavioral psychology) , linguistics , subject pronoun , anaphora (linguistics) , reflexive pronoun , computer science , psychology , artificial intelligence , philosophy , social psychology , resolution (logic)
This paper deals with current epicene[Note 2. This term, taken from Baron (1986), is borrowed from ...]pronominal usage in written English. The first part focuses on the prescription of the so–called generic he and includes a short review of research into epicene pronominal usage in the last three decades. The results of previous research serve as a background to the present study, which, based on two corpora of written English, aims at elucidating singular epicene pronominal choices in the writing of British and American writers. The study shows that the traditional form he is no longer predominant, while singular they is the pronoun most likely to be used. He or she is shown to be used rather rarely. It is argued that the choice of singular epicene pronoun is considerably influenced by the semanto–syntactic type of the antecedent and by the social roles stereotypically associated with the referent. Also, differences between British and American writers are discussed. It is shown that American writers are more conservative in their choice of singular epicene pronoun and an explanation of the difference is suggested.