Since the second wave of feminism, non-sexist language use has become an increasingly important topic. A key issue in English is the choice of epicene pronouns, i.e. pronouns that refer to both sexes. Despite the global nature of English, little research has addressed this topic in EFL contexts. This study examines the use of the epicene pronouns he, he or she, and they in two L1 and L2 corpora of student writing. The corpus analyses show that, overall, the L2 English speakers use he significantly more than the L1 speakers, whereas the L1 speakers use they more. Variation found in the L2 subcorpora seems to be partly related to L1 influence: The writers who use he the most are speakers of gendered L1s with a traditional practice of masculine generics. The study also shows that both L1 and L2 writers are affected by the antecedent type in their pronoun choice.
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Cited by (10)
Cited by ten other publications
Stojanovska-Ilievska, Natasha
2024. A corpus-based study of epicene pronouns used by Macedonian learners of English. Open Linguistics 10:1
Tarrayo, Veronico N.
2024.
Using the third-person singular pronoun
they
in academic writing: perspectives from English language teachers in Philippine universities
. Language Awareness 33:3 ► pp. 625 ff.
Thienthong, Atikhom
2022. ‘It Looks Weird to Me.’: Attitudes Towards Standard Usage and Variant Use in Present-Day English. rEFLections 29:3 ► pp. 549 ff.
Zhang, Xiufeng & Hengwen Yang
2021. Gender voices in Chinese university students’ English writing: A corpus study. Linguistics and Education 64 ► pp. 100935 ff.
Zhang, Xiufeng & Hengwen Yang
2024. Perception and usage of English epicene pronouns among L2 teachers in China‐focusing on he, he or she and they. European Journal of Education 59:3
Paterson, Laura L.
2020. Non-sexist Language Policy and the Rise (and Fall?) of Combined Pronouns in British and American Written English. Journal of English Linguistics 48:3 ► pp. 258 ff.
Stormbom, Charlotte
2019. Language change in L2 academic writing: The case of epicene pronouns. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 38 ► pp. 95 ff.
Stormbom, Charlotte
2020. Gendering in open access research articles: The role of epicene pronouns. English for Specific Purposes 60 ► pp. 193 ff.
Stormbom, Charlotte
2022. Singular they in English as a foreign language. Applied Linguistics Review 13:5 ► pp. 873 ff.
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