Are New Gender-Neutral Pronouns Difficult to Process in Reading? The Case of Hen in SWEDISH

Vergoossen, Hellen; Pärnamets, Philip; Renström, Emma; Sendén, Marie Gustafsson

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.574356

Cited by 13 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…In some antecedent types, the pronoun they was read with greater facility than the other pronouns, whereas in other antecedent types, it was read with equal facility as the other pronouns (i.e., gender-matching pronouns). These results are in line with the findings reported by previous studies ( Foertsch and Gernsbacher, 1997 ; Sanford and Filik, 2007 ; Vergoossen et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 94%

Acceptance and Online Interpretation of “Gender-Neutral Pronouns”: Performance Asymmetry by Chinese English as a Foreign Language Learners

2022

Front. Psychol.

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The present study (N = 109) set out to examine the role of cross-linguistic differences as a source of potential difficulty in the acceptance and online interpretation of the English singular they by Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners across two levels of second-language proficiency. Experiment 1 operationalized performance through an untimed acceptability judgment test and Experiment 2 through a self-paced reading task. Statistical analyses yielded an asymmetric pattern of results. Experiment 1 indicated that unlike native English speakers who generally accepted the singular they with all antecedent types, two Chinese EFL groups consisting of English majors (higher level) and non-English majors (lower level) both rated it as the least acceptable pronoun regardless of their proficiency level. In contrast, Experiment 2 demonstrated that like native English speakers, both Chinese EFL groups were not disrupted in their reading by the use of the singular they most of the time, although its online interpretation was modulated by L2 proficiency levels of the participants. While the English majors were not affected by the use of the singular they, the non-English majors spent a significantly longer time reading the latter region of the sentences where the singular they was used. In short, the results of the two experiments seem to indicate that under no time constraint, L2 speakers showed a heightened degree of grammar sensitivity, whereas when there was a time constraint, their grammatical sensitivity was reduced by a greater need to focus on meaning. The difficulty for Chinese EFL learners to acquire the singular they may be located at the restructuring of their existing knowledge of the plural feature of they [−PLURAL] in their mental lexicon and the adaptation to the sociocultural norms of the target language. The pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 94%

Acceptance and Online Interpretation of “Gender-Neutral Pronouns”: Performance Asymmetry by Chinese English as a Foreign Language Learners

2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…This imbalance is important because it indicates that resistance to hen is mainly based on emotional or affective grounds, and less on ‘rational’ or objective grounds, such as actual problems in processing the content of a sentence. This aligns with results from eye‐tracking (Vergoossen et al., 2020b), where hen did not have a relevant processing cost in reading. Still, hen seems to evoke negativity.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Results from Study 2, where participants rated sentences with pronouns in the specific and generic meaning, indicated that resistance towards hen mainly was affectional – negative valence was higher for sentences with hen compared to sentences with binary pronouns, but especially for sentences with the specific meaning of hen. Yet, grammaticality and especially reading difficulty revealed that hen is both perceived as grammatically correct and not that hard to read, which aligns with eye‐tracking studies showing that hen had a negligible processing cost (Vergoossen et al., 2020b). Grammaticality and reading difficulty tap into the cognitive aspects of attitudes, while negative valence is related to affect.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

The multiple meanings of the gender‐inclusive pronoun hen: Predicting attitudes and use

Renström

Lindqvist

Sendén

2022

Euro J Social Psych

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The Swedish gender-inclusive pronoun hen can be used generically (referring to anyone), or specifically (referring to non-binary gender identities). Three studies tested evaluations and use of hen, and individual-level predictors. In Study 1 (N = 2145), specific hen was slightly favoured over generic hen. In Study 2 (N = 297), hen was more negatively evaluated than binary pronouns, and generic hen was more positively evaluated than specific hen. In Study 3 (N = 450), hen was less frequently used compared to binary pronouns overall but preferred in generic contexts. Traditionalism mainly predicted attitudes towards generic hen and beliefs about gender, as binary mainly predicted attitudes towards specific hen, although the pattern varied across studies.Because hen was preferred in generic contexts, but not in specific ones, this work has implications for understanding the non-acceptance of non-binary gender identities since the traditional binary notion of gender still is strong.

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“…Gender pronouns resolve some (but not all) of these ambiguities. Indeed, people read sentences more slowly when they refers to an individual than a group (Sanford & Filik, 2007; but see Vergoossen et al, 2020). However, this difficulty may simply be due to the relative unfamiliarity of singular they as a personal pronoun.…”

Section: Language and Social Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

People’s Beliefs About Pronouns Reflect Both the Language They Speak and Their Ideologies

Bailey¹,

Dembroff²,

Wodak³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Across languages, pronouns encode a range of social information, such as the speaker’s age relative to the addressee (e.g., the Hindi pronoun aap) or the referent’s gender (e.g., the English pronoun he). The assumptions underlying certain pronouns are uncontroversial (e.g., people are different ages). Other pronouns, however, pertain to aspects of the social world that are currently being fiercely debated (e.g., whether gender is binary and apparent). While prior research has explored people’s beliefs about social groups and identities, less is known about how people reason about the intersection of identity and language: Which social identities (if any) do lay speakers think that pronouns should encode, and why do they think this? We found that U.S. English-speaking participants (NTotal = 1,120) endorsed gender pronouns more than various other types, including pronouns based on other identities (e.g., age, race) and identity-neutral pronouns (Studies 1–3). In addition, participants’ ideological beliefs about social groups as distinct (essentialism) and hierarchal (social dominance orientation) related to (Study 2; preregistered) and causally influenced (Study 3; preregistered) their endorsement of both gender and race pronouns. The present findings address an underexplored set of lay beliefs about social identities and language. Despite recent calls for greater use of identity-neutral pronouns, English-speaking participants in this sample overwhelmingly endorsed the use of gender pronouns, in part because of their social ideologies.

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Are New Gender-Neutral Pronouns Difficult to Process in Reading? The Case of Hen in SWEDISH

Cited by 13 publications

References 30 publications

Acceptance and Online Interpretation of “Gender-Neutral Pronouns”: Performance Asymmetry by Chinese English as a Foreign Language Learners

Acceptance and Online Interpretation of “Gender-Neutral Pronouns”: Performance Asymmetry by Chinese English as a Foreign Language Learners

The multiple meanings of the gender‐inclusive pronoun hen: Predicting attitudes and use

People’s Beliefs About Pronouns Reflect Both the Language They Speak and Their Ideologies

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