Language change in L2 academic writing: The case of epicene pronouns

Stormbom, Charlotte

doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2019.02.001

Cited by 12 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(62 reference statements)

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“…The participants in this study used a variety of epicene pronoun options with singular they comprising the largest portion at 70.6%. The high usage of singular they aligns more closely with the L1 usage found in the literature (see Stormbom, 2018Stormbom, , 2019 than the predicted high usage of generic he found in previous research (see Abudalbuh, 2012;Pauwels and Winter, 2004). One possible reason for the high usage of singular they could be because in Chinese, there is only one spoken form of generic pronouns.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…Since the shift towards more gender-inclusive language, there has been a decline in usage of generic he among English L1 speakers (Baker, 2010). It is important to note though that generic he is often the most common option selected by EL2 speakers in writing (Abudalbuh, 2012;Pauwels & Winter, 2004;Stormbom, 2018Stormbom, , 2019.…”

Section: Epicene Pronoun Choices and Avoidancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This tends to be used in more formal written contexts, however, its main criticism is that it is cumbersome to use repeatedly in speech (Adami, 2009;Baron, 1981). Overall, this pronoun choice tends to be used less frequently than generic he and singular they by both L1 and L2 speakers (Paterson 2011;Stormbom, 2018Stormbom, , 2019.…”

Section: Epicene Pronoun Choices and Avoidancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies that investigate English L2 (EL2) speakers tend to only investigate written forms and do not address spoken usage. These include corpus-based projects (Stormbom, 2018;2019), sentence completion tasks (Abudalbuh, 2012), and comprehension when reading (Speyer & Schleef, 2018;Sudo, 2007). Most studies investigate EL2 speakers from languages such as German, French and Swedish, and not a Chinese L1 background.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gendered Pronouns in Chinese EL2 Speech: The Case of Epicene Pronouns

Reilly-Thornton¹

2021

TEANGA

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This paper presents an exploratory study on the usage of epicene pronouns in the speech of Chinese EL2 students, who were undertaking a Master’s programme in the UK. The reasons for speakers’ use or non-use of epicene pronouns is also explored to provide a fuller picture of the speakers’ usage as well as their perceptions of gender-inclusive pronouns. An elicitation based speaking task was used to gather epicene pronoun usage. This was followed by a semi-structured interview utilizing stimulated recall techniques to gather data on the participants’ reasons for use or non-use of epicene pronouns as well as their perceptions of gender-inclusive pronouns. The findings showed that singular they was the epicene pronoun used most often, with the reason being that the participants were imagining a group of people. The avoidance strategy employed most often by participants was usage of the pronoun you, and the participants’ reasoning was that it made the response more personal for the listener. Regarding the different antecedent types, there was a higher number of avoidance strategies used with notionally plural antecedents. On the other hand, notionally singular antecedents were found to have a higher number of epicene pronouns used. For EL2 educators, these findings can inform the introduction of epicene pronouns to students.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Epicene Pronoun Choices and Avoidancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Epicene Pronoun Choices and Avoidancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gendered Pronouns in Chinese EL2 Speech: The Case of Epicene Pronouns

Reilly-Thornton¹

2021

TEANGA

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“…According to (Mpiranya, 2020;Rounds, 1987;Stormbom, 2019;Uz, 2014) there are kinds of Personal Pronouns. They are personal pronouns agreement with noun, agreement with indefinite pronouns, agreement with collective nouns.…”

Section: A Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Students’ Ability In Writing Skill: Using Personal Pronoun In Narrative text

et al. 2021

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This study aims to determine the students’ ability of second grade SMP Talitakum to use personal pronouns in narrative text. The subject of this study are students of second grade and the object of this study was the students' ability to use pronouns in narrative text. The sample of this study are 16 students. Data collection techniques in this study use test and interviews. Based on the data analyzed, the researchers concluded that the students' ability to use pronouns in the narrative text was 68.43% and the students' ability to use personal pronouns in the narrative text is 62.93%. The study concludes that the difficulty affecting students in using pronouns was a lack of understanding of pronouns and narrative text even though they had been taught by the teacher and the lack of grammar books.

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Gendering in open access research articles: The role of epicene pronouns

Stormbom

2020

English for Specific Purposes

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Language change in L2 academic writing: The case of epicene pronouns

Cited by 12 publications

References 27 publications

Gendered Pronouns in Chinese EL2 Speech: The Case of Epicene Pronouns

Gendered Pronouns in Chinese EL2 Speech: The Case of Epicene Pronouns

The Students’ Ability In Writing Skill: Using Personal Pronoun In Narrative text

Gendering in open access research articles: The role of epicene pronouns

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