Trigger warning: This paper contains some examples which might be offensive to some users.The worls of pronouns is changing. From a closed class of words with few members to a much more open set of terms to reflect identities. However, Natural Language Processing (NLP) is barely reflecting this linguistic shift, even though recent work outlined the harms of gender-exclusive language technology. Particularly problematic is the current modeling 3rd person pronouns, as it largely ignores various phenomena like neopronouns, i.e., pronoun sets that are novel and not (yet) widely established. This omission contributes to the discrimination of marginalized and underrepresented groups, e.g., non-binary individuals. However, other identity-expression phenomena beyond gender are also ignored by current NLP technology. In this paper, we provide an overview of 3rd person pronoun issues for NLP. Based on our observations and ethical considerations, we define a series of desiderata for modeling pronouns in language technology. We evaluate existing and novel modeling approaches w.r.t. these desiderata qualitatively, and quantify the impact of a more discrimination-free approach on established benchmark data.1 Essential definition provided by the Mirriam Webster Online Dictionaly at https://www.merriam-webste r.com/dictionary/pronoun 3 https://dictionnaire.lerobert.com/di s-moi-robert/raconte-moi-robert/mot-jo ur/pourquoi-le-robert-a-t-il-integre-lemot-iel-dans-son-dictionnaire-en-ligne.h tml
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to deploy a critical discourse analysis (CDA) to consider exclusionary practices enacted by academic libraries as evidenced through resource provision. Specifically, this paper looks at the inclusion of trans and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) individuals in library guides, TGNC naming practices in abstracts and the physical shelving of transgender studies texts. This paper concludes with a discussion of methods to overcome such exclusionary practices in the future. Design/methodology/approach This paper deploys CDA as informed by queer theory, affording a lens to consider how language and information are structured such that particular power dynamics emerge placing symbolic value on discursively normal identities. CDA helps illuminate when, how and why TGNC individuals remain excluded within academic librarianship practices. Findings Findings show continued investments in heteronormative and cisnormative structures concerning information provision and access for TGNC patrons. TGNC patrons using library guides consistently fail to see any mentioned made of their respective identities aside from research about their identities. Patrons seeking information of personal value (i.e. coming out resources) find few resources. Further, library stacks and databases enact consistent microaggressions such as fetishizing, deadnaming and misgendering. Research limitations/implications This project contains considerable social implications, as it pushes against a continued recalcitrance on the part of academic libraries to invest in neutrality by showing its failures regarding TGNC persons. Practical implications This study possesses a considerable set of practical implications and highlights tangible problems that could be addressed with relative ease by academic librarians through either systemic reorganization of information or TGNC patrons. Alternatively, this work also suggests that if such reformations are not possible, academic librarians can take it upon themselves to call attention to such issues and purposefully mark these failings, thus making it clear that it is a current limitation of how libraries function and invite patrons (both cisgender and transgender) to challenge and change these representations through research and advocacy. Social implications This project contains considerable social implications as it pushes against a continued recalcitrance on the part of academic libraries (and librarianship more broadly) to invest in neutrality. This study contests the idea that while possessing neutrality academic libraries also posit themselves as inherently good and inclusive. By showing the violence that remains enacted upon transgender and gender nonconforming folks through multiple venues within the academic library, this study makes clear that statements of negativity are thrust onto TGNC patrons and they remain excluded from an institution that purports to have their well-being as one of its core values. Originality/value The deployment of CDA within information science is still a relatively new one. While linguists have long understood the multiplicity of discourse beyond language, the application of this method to the academic library as a discursive institution proves generative. Furthermore, the relationship between academic libraries and their LGBTQ+ populations is both underrepresented and undervalued, a problem exacerbated when focusing on how transgender and gender nonconforming patrons see themselves and their relationships to the academic library. This paper shows the dire state of representation for these particular patrons and provides groundwork for positively changing such representations.
This paper explores how ten nonbinary North American YouTubers appeal to legitimizing discourses (van Leeuwen & Wodak 1999) as rationalizations for their choices regarding identity labels and pronouns. Given the local cultural salience of the implications of their language choices, the YouTubers rationalize their terminological choices through legitimizing discourses that prioritize historical facts, lexical definitions, and personal feelings. I examine how these discourses presuppose particular language ideologies, or implicit assumptions about what language users view as “appropriate” language practices. In the case of the nonbinary YouTubers, I illustrate that the vloggers’ legitimizing discourses appeal to and juxtapose a referentialist ideology (Hill 2008, Silverstein 1979), according to which words should describe the world truthfully, and an ideology of self-identification (Zimman 2019), which prioritizes individual agency. Crucially, deploying these legitimizing discourses is an important strategy that nonbinary YouTubers draw on as part of their advocacy and education projects.
For transmasculine individuals who undergo testosterone therapy, a lower pitch is often one of the most desired results, both for personal affirmation as well as for how a low pitch is gendered by others. This paper explores how members from a peer support group for transmasculine individuals articulate their experiences taking testosterone. During interviews participants discussed their apperception of the acoustic changes in their voices (Zimman 2012, 2018) as well as the recognition of this change by others. In this paper, I explore how their apperceptions of their voices are organized around a cluster of related qualia of the voice (Harkness 2014, 2017) such as “heaviness”, “deepness”, “resonance”, and social “weightiness”. As their voices lower in pitch over time and they are more frequently gendered as men in social spaces, they navigate shifting positionalities of privilege, and I show how their descriptions of their voices naturalize various qualia of the voice, linking “deepness” to the social “weight”, or power, of a voice.
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