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1/31/2020 English’s Pronoun Problem Is Centuries Old – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/books/review/whats-your-pronoun-dennis-baron.html?action=click&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage 1/2

NONFICTION

By Joe Moran

Published Jan. 21, 2020 Updated Jan. 22, 2020

WHAT’S YOUR PRONOUN?
Beyond He & She
By Dennis Baron

“Pronouns are suddenly sexy,” Dennis Baron declares at the start of “What’s Your
Pronoun?” For “pronouns,” read one specific pronoun, or rather its long-lamented absence
in English: the third-person singular gender-neutral pronoun. And for “sexy,” read thorny.
Pronouns now come up in lawsuits, school regulations and company codes of conduct.
Colleges ask students to provide their preferred pronouns; online dating sites offer pronoun
options. “It used to be nerdy to discuss parts of speech outside of grammar class,” Baron, a
professor emeritus of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois, writes. “Now it’s
cool.”

After this slightly forced attempt at with-itness, “What’s Your Pronoun?” settles down into a
scrupulous and absorbing survey. Its great virtue is to show that these issues are nothing
new: Gender-neutral pronouns like “ze,” “thon” and “heer” have been circulating since the
mid-19th century; others as far back as 1375.

Almost no one now defends the use of a generic “he” — but what to replace it with? Baron is
surely right that no one cares for “his or her”: too unwieldy. As for the pronouns historically
proposed to replace “he” or “she,” they failed to gain traction because “they look strange on
the page.”

Coiners of new pronouns might usefully counter that they want these words to look strange,
so as to draw attention to the social construction of gender or the patriarchal roots of
traditional pronouns. Fair enough, but the point about pronouns is that they replace nouns,
and thus trade the specific for the generic — so they will probably catch on only when they
are inconspicuous. In writing, a pronoun that draws attention to itself stops the reader’s eye
and checks their pace at the wrong point in a sentence.

Englishs̓ Pronoun Problem Is
Centuries Old

https://www.nytimes.com/

1/31/2020 English’s Pronoun Problem Is Centuries Old – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/books/review/whats-your-pronoun-dennis-baron.html?action=click&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage 2/2

For Baron the solution is clear, and I used it (hopefully unobtrusively) in that last sentence:
the singular “they.” He provides ample textual evidence, from Shakespeare on, that this is a
perfectly respectable option — and so unconscious that even those who condemn it invoke it
without noticing.

For the still unpersuaded, he points out that singular “they” is older than singular “you.”
Only in the 1600s did singular “you” start pushing out “thou” and “thee.” Having the same
pronoun for both singular and plural forms makes for potential ambiguity. So colloquial
plural forms have sprung up, such as “y’all,” common in the American South, or the more
recent “you guys” — an oddly gendered locution at a time when the generic “he” is
becoming extinct. Still, we get by. No one considers ditching the singular “you.”

For Baron, the benefit of singular “they” is that it is often used by those in search of a
nonbinary or gender-neutral pronoun, as well as those who give such issues little thought.
While many language mavens are coming around reluctantly to singular “they” — in
December Merriam-Webster anointed “they” its “word of the year” — some traditionalists
still hold out against it. Their defense is convention. I admit that the nonbinary use of “they”
to refer to a specific person — “Alex likes their burger with mustard” — still sounds jangly to
my ears. I will get used to it. Language, as Baron eloquently shows, works as a dynamic
democracy, not as rule by experts. The sticklers may not like “they” (singular) but they
(plural) will eventually have to bow to the inevitable.

Baron’s book layers on rather too many examples of historical usage, including a 60-page
“chronology of gender-neutral and nonbinary pronouns” at the end. This scholarly
assiduousness, though, also makes him the ideal pilot through these contentious political-
linguistic waters. If you want to know why more people are asking “what’s your pronoun?”
then you (singular or plural) should read this book.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/us/merriam-webster-they-word-year.html

1/31/2020 She’s the Next President. Wait, Did You Read That Right? – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/us/politics/woman-president-she-her.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage 1/5

NEWS ANALYSIS

She̓ s the Next President. Wait, Did You
Read That Right?
A new study, which found that Americans were reluctant to use the word “she” to describe a
hypothetical president, highlights the sneaky ways language illuminates bias.

By Jessica Bennett

Jan. 24, 2020

It was a blip of a moment during the Democratic debate last week, one perhaps overshadowed by a
long discussion of the prospect of a female president. Responding to a question about climate
change, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said, “I will do everything a president can do all
by herself on the first day.”

All by herself. Did you clock the use of that word?

A study released this month shows that you did — and that, in fact, it may have cost you a third of a
second in reading time just now.

Her. It’s a three-letter pronoun that, despite the seemingly endless debate over whether a woman
can become president, feels relatively benign. But what if its use, or an unconscious aversion to its
use, had some small power to influence voter perception? Could something as simple as a pronoun
reflect, or even affect, the way voters understand power?

That’s the question raised by the research, conducted by cognitive scientists and linguists at M.I.T.,
the University of Potsdam and the University of California, San Diego, who surveyed people during
the run-up to the 2016 election. Wanting to understand how world events might influence language,
the researchers hypothesized that the possibility a woman would be elected president at that time
might override the implicit bias people had toward referring to the president as “he.”

But what they found was that Americans — even young, self-identified Democratic women who
believed Hillary Clinton would win — were reluctant to use “she” even in the context of a
hypothetical president.

“There seemed to be a real bias against referring to the next president as ʻshe,’” said Roger Levy, a
professor of brain and cognitive sciences at M.I.T. and one of the authors of the study.

When the researchers watched subjects in a reading setting — they were asked to read a short
passage about the next president, pressing a button on a screen to reveal each word of the sentence
— their bias was even more pronounced: The word “she,” when referring to the future president,

https://www.nytimes.com/

https://www.nytimes.com/by/jessica-bennett

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/elizabeth-warren.html

http://news.mit.edu/2020/she-missing-presidential-language-0108

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797619890619

1/31/2020 She’s the Next President. Wait, Did You Read That Right? – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/us/politics/woman-president-she-her.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage 2/5

made people cognitively stumble, leading to a “considerable disruption” in reading time, said Titus
von der Malsburg, another author of the study and a linguist at the University of Potsdam, in
Germany.

“People had difficulties reading ʻshe’ even if the text had previously used ʻshe,’ showing how
persistent and deeply ingrained this bias is,” he said.

So could struggling to say or read the word “she” in the context of a president affect our willingness
to vote for a woman?

“That’s of course the million-dollar question,” said Dr. von der Malsburg.

He noted that if people gravitated toward male language when talking about presidents, that could
indirectly contribute to a culture in which women were not seen as typical candidates.

“And that, in turn, would likely influence election outcomes because women would have to do extra
work to convince voters that they can do the job,” he said.

What lurks behind language?
When it comes to women in politics — and specifically, women in the presidency — often lurking
behind language are unconscious assumptions about women in power.

“We are uneasy with the president as ʻshe’ because encountering it forces us to have in mind a new
conception of ʻpresident,’” the linguist Robin Lakoff said.

Dr. Lakoff, whose book “Language and Woman’s Place” helped create the field of gender linguistics
in the 1970s, said that language tended to reflect the beliefs of a particular moment in time.

But it can also shape them.

Research has found that the use of the pronoun “he” can create a male bias in readers, that
countries with gendered language have higher gender inequality and that even subtly sexist
language may influence voters’ likelihood of supporting a particular candidate.

In recent years, some governments and organizations have started paying more attention to the
power of words, taking steps to update or replace gendered terms.

In 2013, Washington State joined Florida and Minnesota in combing through its state codes and
statutes to adjust terms like “ombudsman” (now “ombuds”) to be gender neutral. As Liz Watson,
then senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, said at the time: “Words matter. Words
help shape our perceptions about what opportunities are available to women and men.”

Administrators at Yale announced in 2017 that they would replace the words “freshman” and
“upperclassman” with “first-year” and “upper-level” students, joining several other universities that
have informally made the change. And the singular “they” — increasingly popular as both as
substitute for “he or she” and as a gender-neutral pronoun for those who identify as nonbinary —
was recently declared the “Word of the Decade” by the American Dialect Society.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00289252

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-011-0083-5

http://www.lakeresearch.com/news/NameItChangeIt/NameItChangeIt.pres

https://ofco.wa.gov/

https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-gender-neutral-language-rewritten-into-state-laws.html

https://www.americandialect.org/2019-word-of-the-year-is-my-pronouns-word-of-the-decade-is-singular-they

1/31/2020 She’s the Next President. Wait, Did You Read That Right? – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/us/politics/woman-president-she-her.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage 3/5

That would seem like progress, said the historian Barbara J. Berg. Yet when it comes to the halls of
power, she said, the masculine “remains the default in our language.”

It is popular these days to tell the story of Abigail Adams, wife of the founding father John, who
urged her husband in a letter in 1776 to “remember the ladies.” Lesser known is that his reply, in a
letter back, called her request “saucy.” (The word “she,” of course, does not appear anywhere in the
Declaration of Independence, nor does the word “woman.”)

And while, over the years, words like “mailman,” “policeman” and “stewardess” have been replaced
with terms like “mail carrier,” “police officer” and “flight attendant,” there are still plenty of phrases
for which “he” connotes power. Think “manning the command post,” “maestro” or even “guy” as a
way to describe expertise. “As in, ʻHe’s a stats guy’ or ʻHe’s a policy guy,’” said Philip N. Cohen, a
sociologist at the University of Maryland.

The 2018 midterm elections broke all sorts of records — and a historic number of women ran for
office and won — and yet they also provided ample opportunity to hear (and see) the phrase
“freshman congresswoman.” Doesn’t it sound sort of funny?

Deborah Tannen, a linguist at Georgetown University, described how she had recently spoken with a
group of female judges, some of whom recalled being referred to as “sir” when on the bench.
Presumably, Dr. Tannen said, the speakers were nervous — and “sir” was an attempt to show
respect.

“ʻSir’ is associated with respect to an extent that ʻma’am’ is not,” Dr. Tannen said, noting that she,
too, had occasionally stumbled over such words.

Once, she recalled, at an event in which Michelle Obama was speaking, a friend remarked that “Dr.
Biden” would also be in attendance.

“I thought to myself, ʻOh, I didn’t know Joe Biden had a Ph.D.,’” she said. “And of course it was his
wife, who I had met, and who I knew had a Ph.D. So even I do it, Dr. Tannen.”

And then there’s “Madam.” During the 1970s, feminists fought for the adoption of a female
equivalent of “Mr.” — one that did not denote marital status — and were largely successful with the
honorific “Ms.” But male presidents in the United States are often addressed as “Mr. President,”
while a woman — if the way we refer to cabinet secretaries is any indication — would quite likely be
“Madam President.”

“ʻMadam’ could be a term of respect, but it’s also the head of a brothel,” said Dr. Berg, the historian.
“So it’s like this constant subtle reminder of a woman’s status.”

A candidate who can ʻbring people with herʼ
But a new breed of candidates may be flipping that script.

During the recent Democratic debate, in addition to Ms. Warren’s use of “herself” in reference to the
next president on more than one occasion, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said in her closing
statement, “We need a candidate who is actually going to bring people with her.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/amy-klobuchar.html

1/31/2020 She’s the Next President. Wait, Did You Read That Right? – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/us/politics/woman-president-she-her.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage 4/5

Senator Kamala Harris of California, who dropped out of the race late last year, often did the same
when she was running. As California’s first female attorney general, she sifted through the language
that was written into the law — statutes referring to the attorney general as “he” or “his” — and
changed them.

“I’ve always been very aware that when it comes to women holding leadership roles, we are
sometimes asking people to see what they have not seen before,” Ms. Harris said in an email. “As
our government becomes more reflective of the people it represents and the voices at the table
become more diverse, it is important for us to really check how we are creating and supporting an
inclusive environment — and a big part of that is about how we use language.”

Of course, one might argue there’s something of a feedback loop: The language reflects the culture.
The culture won’t change until there is a winning candidate who upends the old biases. But those
running for that spot may be impeded by the incessant talking about gender.

The researchers say the United Kingdom may provide an encouraging case study.

In 2017, they replicated the study there, in the lead-up to an election to determine the next prime
minister.

Theresa May was prime minister at the time and was expected to win — but she was not the first
woman to hold that post. (That was Margaret Thatcher.)

When referring to the next prime minister, the British study participants were more likely to use the
pronoun “she” than “he.”

Sharon Attia contributed research.

Our 2020 Election Guide
Updated Jan. 29, 2020

The Latest

State of the Race

After stalling or slipping in the polls for most of 2019, Bernie Sanders is closing

hard just before the leadoff contests. Here s̓ our latest analysis.

In the final days of the Iowa campaign, each of the leading Democratic

candidates is driving a different message in Facebook ads.

•

Elizabeth Warren, shifting her strategy, is taking on the electability question,

urging voters to embrace “courage over cynicism.”

•

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mollyhensleyclancy/kamala-harris-electability

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/democratic-polls.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections-2020&variant=show&region=BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT&context=Guide

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/29/us/politics/iowa-facebook-political-ads.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections-2020&variant=show&region=BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT&context=Guide

10/20/2018 How do dogs process words? | Earth | EarthSky

https://earthsky.org/earth/how-do-dogs-process-words?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=f9c73b591a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_02_COPY_01&… 2/12

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How do dogs process words?
By Eleanor Imster in Earth | Human World | October 18, 2018

What’s happening in your dog’s brain when it hears you say squirrel? New research looks at how dog’s brains react to
human words.

10/20/2018 How do dogs process words? | Earth | EarthSky

https://earthsky.org/earth/how-do-dogs-process-words?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=f9c73b591a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_02_COPY_01&… 3/12

Eddie, one of the dogs that participated in the study, poses in the fMRI scanner
with two of the toys used in the experiments, “Monkey” and “Piggy.” Image via
Gregory Berns.

The 2019 lunar calendars are here! Order yours before they’re gone. Makes a great gift.

When your dog hears the word squirrel, it might perk up or even run to a window and look out. But, to
your dog, does the word mean, “Something is happening?” Or does your dog picture a small, bushy-tailed
rodent?

According to a new study, dogs have at least a rudimentary neural representation of meaning for words
they’ve been taught and can differentiate words they’ve heard before from those they have not.

The study, published October 15, 2018, in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, used brain
imaging to probe how dogs process words they have been taught to associate with objects.

Ashley Prichard is a Ph.D. candidate in Emory University’s Department of Psychology and first author of
the study. She said in a statement:

Many dog owners think that their dogs know what some words mean, but there really isn’t much scientific
evidence to support that. We wanted to get data from the dogs themselves — not just owner reports.

Neuroscientist Gregory Berns is senior author of the study, and author of the bestselling book What it’s
Like to be a Dog. Burns added:

We know that dogs have the capacity to process at least some aspects of human language since they can learn
to follow verbal commands. Previous research, however, suggests dogs may rely on many other cues to follow
a verbal command, such as gaze, gestures and even emotional expressions from their owners.

10/20/2018 How do dogs process words? | Earth | EarthSky

https://earthsky.org/earth/how-do-dogs-process-words?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=f9c73b591a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_02_COPY_01&… 4/12

Berns is founder of the Dog Project, The project’s goal is to better understand the dog’s mind. It was the
first to train dogs to voluntarily enter a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and remain
motionless during scanning, without restraint or sedation. . Image via Gregory Burns.

The researchers focused on questions surrounding the brain mechanisms dogs use to differentiate between
words, or even what constitutes a word to a dog.

For the current study, 12 dogs of varying breeds were trained to retrieve two different objects, based on the
objects’ names. For the experiment, the trained dog lay in the fMRI scanner while the dog’s owner stood
directly in front of the dog at the opening of the machine and said the names of the dog’s toys at set
intervals, then showed the dog the corresponding toys.

Eddie, a golden retriever-Labrador mix, for instance, heard his owner say the words piggy or monkey, then
his owner held up the matching toy. As a control, the owner then spoke gibberish words – such as bobbu
and bodmick – then held up novel objects like a hat or a doll.

The results showed greater activation in auditory regions of the brain to the novel invented words
compared to the trained words. Pritchard said:

We expected to see that dogs neurally discriminate between words that they know and words that they don’t.
What’s surprising is that the result is opposite to that of research on humans — people typically show greater
neural activation for known words than novel words.

The researchers hypothesize that the dogs may show greater neural activation to a new, unknown word
because they sense their owners want them to understand what they are saying, and they are trying to do
so. Berns said:

Dogs ultimately want to please their owners, and perhaps also receive praise or food.

He added:

10/20/2018 How do dogs process words? | Earth | EarthSky

https://earthsky.org/earth/how-do-dogs-process-words?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=f9c73b591a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_02_COPY_01&… 5/12

Dogs may have varying capacity and motivation for learning and understanding human words, but they appear
to have a neural representation for the meaning of words they have been taught, beyond just a low-level
Pavlovian response.

Source: Awake fMRI Reveals Brain Regions for Novel Word Detection in Dogs

Bottom line: A new study looks at how dogs process words.

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