Cover not available
Article published In:
International Journal of Learner Corpus Research
Vol. 4:1 (2018) ► pp.1–22

Epicene pronouns in intermediate to advanced EFL writing

| Åbo Akademi University

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.

Keywords: generic he , singular they , gender-paired he or she , gender-inclusive language, EFL writing
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The grammatical category of gender
  • 3.Epicene pronouns in English
    • 3.1Background to the epicene pronoun problem
    • 3.2Research on epicene pronouns
  • 4.Data and methodology
    • 4.1Corpora
    • 4.2Extracting epicene pronouns
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Comparison between the L1 and the L2 corpus
    • 5.2Comparison across subcorpora
    • 5.3Antecedent type
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 31 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.16016.sto
References
Abudalbuh, M.
2012 Ideology, Gender Roles, and Pronominal Choice: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of the Use of English Third Person Generic Pronouns by Native Speakers of Arabic. Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of Kansas, Lawrence.Google Scholar
American Psychological Association
2009 Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Antón-Méndez, I.
2009 “Gender bender: Gender errors in L2 pronoun production”, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 391, 119–139. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 “Whose? L2-English speakers’ possessive pronoun gender errors”, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 14(3), 318–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baranowski, M.
2002 “Current usage of the epicene pronoun in written English”, Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(3), 378–397. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baron, D.
1981 “The epicene pronoun: The word that failed”, American Speech 56(2), 83–97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., Finegan, E., Johansson, S., Conrad, S. & Leech, G.
1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bodine, A.
1975 “Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: Singular ‘they’, sex-indefinite ‘he’, and ‘he or she’”, Language in Society 4(2), 129–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bußmann, H. & Hellinger, M.
(Eds.) 2001 Gender across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men. Volume 11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
(Eds.) 2002 Gender across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men. Volume 21. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
(Eds.) 2003 Gender across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men. Volume 31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Centre for English Corpus Linguistics
2016: online. The Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). Available at: [URL] (accessed June 2017).
Corbett, G.
1991 Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curzan, A.
2003 Gender Shifts in the History of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gerner, J.
2000 “Singular and plural anaphors of indefinite personal pronouns in spoken British English”. In Kirk, J. (Ed.), Corpora Galore: Analyses and Techniques in Describing English. Papers from the Nineteenth International Conference of English Language Research on Computerised Corpora (ICAME 1998). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 93–114.Google Scholar
Granger, S., Dagneaux, E., Meunier, F., & Paquot, M.
(Eds.) 2009 The International Corpus of Learner English. Version 2 (Handbook + CD-ROM). Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain.Google Scholar
Gygax, P., Gabriel, U., Sarrasin, O., Oakhill, J., & Garnham, A.
2008 “Generically intended, but specifically interpreted: When beauticians, musicians, and mechanics are all men”, Language and Cognitive Processes 23(3), 464–485. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hellinger, M. & Motschenbacher, H.
(Eds.) 2015 Gender across Languages: The Linguistic Representation of Women and Men. Volume 41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Henley, N. & Abueg, J.
2003 “A review and synthesis of research on comprehension of the masculine as a generic form in English”, Estudios de Sociolinguistica: Linguas, Sociedades e Culturas 4(2), 427–454.Google Scholar
Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G. K.
2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laitinen, M.
2007 Agreement Patterns in English: Diachronic Corpus Studies on Common-Number Pronouns. Helsinki, Finland: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Lee, J.
2007 “Acceptability of sexist language among young people in Hong Kong”, Sex Roles 561, 285–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meyers, M.
1990 “Current generic pronoun usage: An empirical study”, American Speech 65(3), 228–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, F.
1994 “Student writing and pronoun reference: A study of inclusive language in practice”, Women and Language 17(2), 2–6.Google Scholar
Newman, M.
1992 “Pronominal disagreements: The stubborn problem of singular epicene antecedents”, Language in Society 21(3), 447–475. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1998 “What can pronouns tell us? A case study of English epicenes”, Studies in Language 22(2), 353–389. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paterson, L.
2011 “Epicene pronouns in UK national newspapers: A diachronic study”, ICAME Journal 351, 171–184.Google Scholar
2014 British Pronoun Use, Prescription, and Processing. Linguistic and Social Influences Affecting ‘They’ and ‘He’. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Pauwels, A.
2001 “Non-sexist language reform and generic pronouns in Australian English”, English World-Wide 22(1), 105–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quirk, R. Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J.
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Svenska Akademiens ordlista över svenska språket
(SAOL) 2015 14th edition. Stockholm: Svenska Akademien.Google Scholar
Scott, M.
2008 WordSmith Tools. Version 5. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.Google Scholar
Zuber, S. & Reed, A.
1993 “The politics of grammar handbooks”, College English 55(5), 515–530. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 8 other publications

Liu, Dilin
2018. A corpus study of Chinese EFL learners’ use of circumstance, demand, and significant . Journal of Second Language Studies 1:2 ► pp. 310 ff. DOI logo
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. DOI logo
Stormbom, Charlotte
2019. Language change in L2 academic writing: The case of epicene pronouns. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 38 ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Stormbom, Charlotte
2020. Gendering in open access research articles: The role of epicene pronouns. English for Specific Purposes 60 ► pp. 193 ff. DOI logo
Stormbom, Charlotte
2022. Singular they in English as a foreign language. Applied Linguistics Review 13:5 ► pp. 873 ff. DOI logo
Tarrayo, Veronico N.
2023.  Using the third-person singular pronoun they in academic writing: perspectives from English language teachers in Philippine universities . Language Awareness ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
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. DOI logo
Zhang, Xiufeng & Hengwen Yang
2021. Gender voices in Chinese university students’ English writing: A corpus study. Linguistics and Education 64 ► pp. 100935 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.