A corpus-based study of epicene pronouns used by Macedonian learners of English

2.1 Research on epicene pronouns use in native English-speaking contexts

The use of singular they can be traced back to the Middle Ages (Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Baranowski 2002), when it was used alongside he or she and he (Baranowski 2002). As a matter of fact, there exist written materials originating as early as the fourteenth century that document the use of the singular they (Paterson 2014).

It was the prescriptive grammarians from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century that insisted on the use of the generic he instead, labelling as grammatically incorrect the correspondence between the plural pronoun they and a singular antecedent (Bodine 1975, Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Baranowski 2002, Paterson 2014, Stormbom 2021). This view stemmed from the androcentric position of the grammarians in the eighteenth century since the choice of he also constituted a violation, only this time it was a violation of the principle for gender agreement between a pronoun and its antecedent (Bodine 1975, Baranowski 2002), and there is no reason to presume that the lack of number concord indicates greater inaccuracy than the lack of gender agreement (Bodine 1975).

Since this policy was primarily enforced in the written language, it had little influence on the spoken language, where singular they continued to exist (Bodine 1975, Huddleston and Pullum 2002, Baranowski 2002) despite all attempts to eradicate its use. To this end, since the middle of the nineteenth century, there have been multiple attempts to coin a new pronoun that would potentially fill the gap for a third-person singular common-gender pronoun. These pronouns were formed through various word-formation processes, such as: “borrowings (French on, le, and en), blends (thon, he’er, shem), clippings (e, per), and root creations (na, ae, ip)” (Baron 1981, 86), but none of these attempts have succeeded (Baranowski 2002).

With the rise of second-wave feminism in the late 1960s and the 1970s, attention was directed to gender inequality in society. An important part of feminist initiatives was the movement against sexist language, which opposed the prevalent use of generic he, alongside other instances of masculine generics (e.g. nouns overtly marked for gender, such as chairman, spokesman, etc.), on the grounds of their being gender-biased (Hekanaho 2020, Bodine 1975). Understanding that language had the power not only to describe but also to shape people’s reality, feminists recognized that women’s subordination to men was partly achieved through language. Therefore, they fought for greater visibility and inclusivity for women, proposing alternative strategies that would suppress the once widely accepted use of he in generic contexts and that would thus contribute to greater gender fairness in language.

One such strategy was the pronoun he or she, which has been referred to as a combined pronoun (Paterson 2014), disjunctive pronoun (Balhorn 2009, Newman 1998), or ‘dual’ pronoun (Pauwels 2001). Even though it was an improvement in the linguistic representation of women compared to the generic he, it was oftentimes criticized for being intolerable in longer stretches of text, as well as for being ‘clunky’, ‘long-winded and clumsy’, ‘tedious’, and ‘cumbersome’ (Paterson 2014, 123). Despite its being somewhat gender-inclusive, in that it includes both the masculine and the feminine form, this pronoun is rooted in the conceptualization of gender as a binary construct and is not entirely gender-inclusive. This became particularly evident with the increased visibility of gender diversity in recent decades. Other feminists endorsed singular they, rather than he or she, on the grounds of its being gender-neutral (Balhorn 2009).

Significant advancements occurred in the discussion surrounding epicene pronouns, largely due to feminist language reforms and the implementation of non-sexist guidelines (Paterson 2014) across various publishing platforms, dictionaries, style guides, and grammatical resources. The changing guidelines set by style manuals determined the shifts in the usage of pronouns in academic writing over time, with the frequency of generic he decreasing, singular they slightly increasing, and he or she being widely used in academic writing in the post-debate texts (Adami 2009). However, widespread official recognition and approval of singular they did not immediately follow. Various alternative strategies were proposed, such as reformulating sentences or entirely avoiding the use of a pronoun (Baranowski 2002), using a generic one, pluralizing the antecedent, and switching to the use of first- or second-person pronouns (Paterson 2014).

A survey of handbooks of usage for college writers between 1998 and 2002 has revealed that proposals have been made to avoid the use of the generic he, but there was no mention of using the singular they (Balhorn 2004). Huddleston and Pullum (2002) underscore the habitual use of the singular they in conversation (regardless of the level of formality), as opposed to its avoidance in formal writing, while Laitinen (2002, 159) found that the singular they is ‘gradually spreading towards more literate genres’. In a study of British and American daily newspapers, Baranowski (2002) found that three epicene pronouns co-exist in a parallel fashion in his corpora, namely singular they, he or she, and he. Of these, singular they was most frequently used in the British newspapers, while in the American dailies, he or she was the predominant form, possibly due to the greater grammar-wise conservativism of the American writers.

In corpora of British English compiled from texts dating from the post-2000 period, it has been demonstrated that the singular they is the predominant epicene form, followed by the occasional use of he and comparably rare use of the combined epicene pronouns (Paterson 2014). The findings from these studies on British English epicene pronouns seem to be corroborated in studies of American and Australian English (Stringer and Hopper 1998, Pauwels 2001), which also point to extensive use of singular they. Unlike these studies, which mainly focus on inner-circle English varieties, a study including outer-circle English varieties underscores that he or she and he are the predominant epicene pronouns among speakers from Singapore and the Philippines (Pauwels 2010, as cited by Hekanaho 2020).

Recent decades have seen unprecedented support for the use of the English epicene singular they in most of the English-speaking world. The extent of this shift from generic he to singular they becomes clear from the fact that nowadays, in line with the policies for non-discrimination with regard to gender, it is actually the use of the generic he that is discouraged (Hekanaho 2020, Paterson 2014). The explicit preference for avoidance strategies, albeit with acceptance of the use of singular they under certain circumstances (Chicago Manual of Style 2017, Associated Press Stylebook 2020), has even been substituted with overt acceptance of and recommendation for the use of singular they in some manuals of style (American Psychological Association 2020).

In this day and age, when the awareness of gender diversity has grown, pronouns have also become increasingly important for the validation of personal identities (Baron 2020). They has been favoured as a personal pronoun of reference by many non-binary individuals (Bjorkman 2017, Hekanaho 2020). In addition, the singular they is also preferred as an epicene pronoun, and binary pronouns, such as he or she, are found inappropriate since they are not fully gender-inclusive (Hekanaho 2020). This is why singular they, as a gender-neutral epicene pronoun acknowledging the validity even of non-binary identities, is increasingly endorsed by linguists (Hekanaho 2020, Baron 2020) and even adopted by prescriptive institutions.

Keeping in mind all these developments, it may well be the case that the pronominal system has eventually yielded to the social pressure and recognized singular they for the legitimate form that it is, as predicted (Bodine 1975, Curzan 2003), particularly as changes to the pronominal system are not unprecedented and can be exemplified with the extension of you to include singularity. Thus, they can be conceived as either a plural or a singular pronoun (where the singular sense is a result of extension of the primary plural sense) and this is not reflected in the subject–verb agreement, just as “the historical extension of you from plural to singular (replacing thou) did not have any effect on the form of the verb” (Huddleston and Pullum 2002, 494).

2.2 Research on epicene pronouns use in learner English

Research focusing on the actual production of epicene pronouns by learners of English is scarce (Speyer and Schleef 2018) and the findings from studies of learners from diverse L1 backgrounds are quite heterogeneous. In Abudalbuh’s study (2012) of Arabic learners of English and native English speakers, it was demonstrated that generic he was the most common choice among Arabic learners, as opposed to the English native speakers who predominantly used singular they. A major reason for the prevalence of generic he was located in the Arab linguistic and social androcentricity. Likewise, in a study based on the Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners, Zhang and Yang (2021) examined the use of epicene pronouns among Chinese learners of English, and it was revealed that the generic he was most commonly used, followed by he or she, while the prevalence of singular they was fairly small. These results were partly attributed to the fact that the Chinese society still seems to be dominated by androcentric social norms, despite attempts to improve the status of women. In a similar vein, Kim’s investigation (2011) into Korean EFL learners’ use and perceptions of epicene pronouns indicated a higher acceptance of generic he in comparison to singular they, while the findings of a study based on the ICLE (version 2) and the LOCNESS corpora indicate that learners of English tend to use generic he more often than native speakers, whereas L1 writers show a greater propensity for employing singular they (Stormbom 2018). The combined pronoun he or she appears to be equally prevalent among L1 and L2 writers. Additionally, this study suggests that learners from some L1 backgrounds featuring traditional masculine generics (Russian, Italian, French, German, Dutch, and Czech) exhibit the strongest preference for the generic he.

Conversely, a diachronic study of epicene pronouns used by L1 Swedish learners of English (based on the Finland-Swedish BATMAT corpus) indicated that the prevalence of generic he diminished from the 1970s to the 2010s from 97 to 14%, while the prevalence of singular they increased from 0% in the 1970s to 57% in the 2010s (Stormbom 2019). This was explained by the impact of feminist language planning, as well as the transfer of gender-fair practices from the students’ L1. An exploration of contemporary epicene pronoun usage based on two non-native English corpora (VESPA-SE and BATMAT) from the 2010s presented within the same article revealed considerable use of both the coordinated forms and singular they, which is interpreted as indicative of an on-going linguistic evolution. Some recent studies even reveal that non-native speakers’ knowledge and use of singular they come close to those of native speakers. Thus, in a study conducted at an Austrian university, Speyer and Schleef (2018) investigated the online processing of singular he, she, and singular they by learners of English and native speakers and found that the results of the advanced non-native speakers corresponded to those of native speakers in virtually all parameters. In addition, Hekanaho’s survey study (2020) involving native English speakers, as well as native speakers of Swedish and Finnish who are also fluent in English demonstrated that singular they has overwhelmingly become the predominant choice in generic contexts, with older and more educated participants, as well as non-native speakers being more accepting of gendered pronouns.

2.3 Research gaps

Several studies have discussed the relatedness of particular epicene pronouns with the (sub)type of their antecedent among learners of English from different L1 backgrounds (Zhang and Yang 2021, Zhang et al. 2020, Stormbom 2019, 2018). This is the first study of epicene pronouns used by Macedonian learners of English and it attempts to discover if similar results will be obtained in a Macedonian setting. To the best of my knowledge, there has been no study of epicene pronouns in learner English thus far that has traced the use of epicene pronouns in different years of study at the university to see if there is any development in this regard. Likewise, the association between the students’ gender and their choice of epicene pronouns in a corpus of essays has hitherto not been studied. The relationship between the participants’ gender and their use of English epicene pronouns has been investigated in tasks specifically designed for the purposes of epicene pronouns research (Abudalbuh 2012, Lee 2007), but this study addresses the issue through an analysis of a corpus that was compiled beforehand, regardless of the aims of this particular study, which could offer a more realistic glimpse into the preferred choice of epicene pronouns by the students since the aim of the study was not evident.

The students’ native language, Macedonian, has pronounced masculine generics, as is the case with many other languages from the Indo-European language family (Curzan 2003, Newman 1992), and the third-person singular masculine personal pronoun can be used either to refer back to a male individual or generically, to an antecedent of indeterminate gender. Even in the case of nouns that have both a masculine and a feminine form, e.g. those indicating occupations, the masculine noun can be used generically, to refer to a class of individuals (Minova‑Ǵurkova 1994). Only rarely do there occur combined pronouns in Macedonian (toj/taa ‘he/she’, the possessives negov,-a,-o,-i/nejzin,-a,-o, -i ‘his/her’, the dative forms nemu/nejze ‘to him/to her’, as well as the accusative forms nego/nea ‘him/her’), even in the written language. These combined pronouns are not listed as such in Macedonian language textbooks and their use tends to reflect the gender awareness of the author at an individual level. In Macedonian, there is no equivalent to the English singular they. Despite the existence of a national strategy for gender equality, Macedonian society is still characterized by significant gender inequality and the country is lagging behind the EU average in almost all the domains covered by the gender equality index (work, money, knowledge, time, power, health, intersecting inequalities, and violence), the greatest discrepancy between men and women being in the domains of money and time, with men having greater income and more time to devote to leisure activities (Baševska 2019).

Given the masculine generics of Macedonian, against the backdrop of lingering gender inequality in the society and gender insensitivity in language, the aim of this article was to report on the distribution of epicene he, he or she, and singular they in the argumentative essays by Macedonian advanced learners of English and to address the following research questions:

1. Is the choice of an epicene pronoun associated with a particular (sub)type of antecedent and to what extent do these findings match the ones from previous research?

2. Is there any association between the use of specific epicene pronouns and the students’ year of study at the university?

3. Is there any association between the use of specific epicene pronouns and the students’ gender?

Based on the research questions, the following hypotheses were examined:

1. The choice of an epicene pronoun is associated with a particular (sub)type of antecedent. In line with previous research, he is expected to occur more frequently with antecedents featuring a higher degree of individuation, while they is expected to occur more frequently with antecedents placed towards the lower end of the individuation cline.

2. There is an association between the use of specific epicene pronouns and the students’ year of study at the university, such that participants who have progressed to a higher year of study are expected to use he or she and they more often than the other participants.

3. There is an association between the use of specific epicene pronouns and the students’ gender, such that male participants are expected to use he more often than female ones, while female participants are expected to use he or she and they more often than male ones.

5.1 Distribution of epicene pronouns in ICLE-MK

5.2 Epicene pronouns and antecedent (sub)types

Epicene pronoun choice seems to be determined to a considerable extent by the degree of antecedent individuation (Newman 1998), where individuation is understood as “the ability to see a referent as a distinct entity” (Paterson 2014, 61). Indefinite pronouns are ranked at the lowest position on the individuation hierarchy, followed by NPs with quantifiers, indefinite NPs, and definite NPs, which are characterized by the highest degree of individuation (Newman 1998, Paterson 2014, Stormbom 2018).

The findings from this study point to the prevalent use of singular they with indefinite pronouns compared to the other two epicene pronouns, thus confirming the results from previous studies (Newman 1998, Lee 2007, Adami 2009, Paterson 2014, Stormbom 2018, Hekanaho 2020, Zhang et al. 2020). The most frequently encountered antecedent to singular they in this category was everyone/everybody. This is hardly surprising knowing that, while being grammatically singular, this indefinite pronoun still indicates notional plurality (Quirk et al. 1985) and is therefore more naturally combined with the epicene pronoun they, which itself evokes the concept of plurality. In such cases, the use of the notionally singular he as an epicene pronoun, though being traditionally the only grammatically correct option, is semantically in collision with the notional plurality of the antecedent. They itself occurred in all its forms: they, their, them, and themselves, most of which are illustrated in (13).

Singular they referred back to all instances of everyone in ICLE-MK when it was preceded with the negative particle not, as in (14).

Besides everyone/everybody, they also occurred with other indefinite pronouns, such as anyone, someone, and nobody, confirming the statement by Quirk et al. (1985) that they is frequently co-referential with all indefinite pronouns. This means that even with indefinite pronouns that are not notionally plural, they was the preferred epicene pronoun due to their low degree of individuation. As a matter of fact, in ICLE-MK, anyone occurred only with singular they as an epicene pronoun, as in (15).

Laitinen (2002, 151) found that ‘neither he nor they is clearly preferred with someone’, while in ICLE-MK, someone occurred with all three analysed epicene pronouns. There were several instances of an indefinite pronoun anaphorized by he, one of which is exemplified in (16).

From Table 2, it is apparent that with the increase in the degree of individuation, the prevalence of singular they declines, whereas the prevalence of epicene he and the combined pronoun he or she steadily rises. Hence, antecedents placed towards the lower end of the individuation cline are more strongly associated with the use of singular they, whereas the higher end of the individuation cline is more consistent with the choice of epicene he and he or she. This finding is in line with previous studies on the relationship between the degree of individuation of an antecedent and the choice of an epicene pronoun (Newman 1998, Paterson 2014, Stormbom 2018, Zhang et al. 2020). The following examples illustrate the use of he as an epicene pronoun with a definite NP (17), an indefinite NP (18), and an NP with quantifier (19).

He or she occurred more than twice as frequently with definite NP antecedents compared to indefinite pronoun antecedents (13.98 vs 6.88%, respectively), which suggests a perceived higher degree of individuation of this pronoun, as is the case with epicene he.

Sometimes even within the same essay, various strategies were employed to refer back to singular NP antecedents, possibly depending on the perceived varying degrees of individuation of the NPs. Thus, in (20), the author used they with an indefinite NP and he with a definite one.

On the whole, the first hypothesis was confirmed since singular they did indeed occur more readily with antecedents leaning towards the lower end of the individuation spectrum, such as indefinite pronouns, while the use of he and he or she was more prevalent with antecedents towards the higher end of the individuation spectrum, most notably definite NPs.

5.3 Epicene pronouns use across the years of study at the university

At the Department of English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philology the undergraduate studies proceed over 4 years. The textbooks used in the first year of studies are at an upper-intermediate level (or B2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference – CEFR). In the second year, students use textbooks at an advanced level (or C1 according to CEFR), while the third year is a transition from an advanced to a proficient level of study (C1 to C2 according to CEFR). The textbooks used in the final year are at the proficiency level (or C2 according to CEFR). Knowing that the essays in ICLE-MK were contributed by students in the second, third, and fourth years of their studies, the information above should give readers only an approximate indication of the students’ level of proficiency.

The second hypothesis suggests that there is an association between the prevalence of specific epicene pronouns and the students’ progression in their academic years at the university. It posits that students who have advanced to the senior years of study are expected to use he or she and they more frequently compared to the second year students. This is based on the assumption that with the progression through the academic years, especially as they move towards the advanced level of L2 proficiency and beyond, students get exposed to diverse L1 English sources, not necessarily in the classroom, but in all sorts of different contexts, that could potentially increase their awareness of the current trends regarding epicene pronouns in the English-speaking world (Speyer and Schleef 2018). There is practically no previous research in this area, so no comparisons to prior studies can be made.

Assuming that the evolution of English epicene pronouns is unlikely to have been particularly addressed in the textbooks used at the time of corpus collection, one cannot expect there to be a typical learning curve over the years for the majority of the students regarding this issue. On the contrary, students might exhibit greater or lesser awareness of the shifts in the pronoun paradigm by virtue of some extra-linguistic factors, such as the degree and variety of their exposure to English-speaking media, communication with English native speakers or staying in an English-speaking country for those students who could afford that opportunity. Developmental factors are also at play. Namely, some learners of English at the B2 level are believed to find it hard to relate a stereotypical masculine and feminine antecedent to they. However, these issues are outgrown at levels C1–C2 (Speyer and Schleef 2018).

Overall, the results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference from the second to the third, from the third to the fourth, and from the second to the fourth year of study regarding the prevalence of particular epicene pronouns viewed in their totality. However, analysing the prevalence of each of the epicene pronouns in the four distinct antecedent categories across the academic years pointed to a statistically significant increase in the prevalence of they with NPs with quantifiers between the second and the fourth year of study. Since NPs with quantifiers are placed towards the lower end of the individuation continuum, this finding is hardly surprising. Singular they is typically found more frequently with antecedents that display lower individuation. That the fourth-year students should display a greater prevalence of they with NPs with quantifiers as antecedents compared to the second-year students indicates that students become increasingly aware that a gender-neutral epicene pronoun like they is more suited to NPs with quantifiers than the other epicene pronouns.

The combined pronoun demonstrated a consistently declining trend over the years, suggesting that students tend to become more polarized over the years in their choice of an epicene pronoun, i.e. they primarily choose between he or they, while he or she is considered a less viable alternative, possibly because it is “too long, too awkward, too binary” (Baron 2020, 7). The other two epicene pronouns, he and they, demonstrated fluctuating trends over the years, suggesting that no pronoun has stabilized as the pronoun of choice. That said, singular they was still the predominant epicene pronoun across all years of study. In general, learners of English are expected to be more resistant to change and more compliant with the prescriptive norms in grammar (Hekanaho 2020) so as not to violate the number concord principle with singular they. Then again, many of them are familiarized to a certain extent with the predominance of singular they in actual L1 English speech and writing and are tempted to mirror the model provided by the native speakers. Hence, the fluctuating trends of he and they are understandable, as the shift in the pronominal system was a work in progress anyway in the mid-2010s, even for the English native speakers.

5.4 Epicene pronouns use and the students’ gender

The third hypothesis proposed a connection between the selection of certain epicene pronouns and the gender of the students. It anticipated that male students would tend to use he more frequently than female students, who would in turn tend to use he or she and they more often than male participants. This hypothesis was based on previous research that proved that male participants tend to use epicene he, especially if their L1 has prominent masculine generics and if they live in androcentric societies (Abudalbuh 2012, Lee 2007). Conversely, female participants tend to be “more sensitive to the exclusive maleness of he than males are” (Balhorn 2009, 403), and they typically exhibit greater awareness and concern regarding gender equality in language use, by opting for he/she more frequently than males (Lee 2007).

In a culture where gender inequality is still an issue, one could expect a ‘carryover (i.e., transfer) effect of a male-biased ideology’ from the learners’ L1 to their L2 (Abudalbuh 2012, 138). However, this study did not verify that expectation. Even though the prevalence of epicene he was higher among male students, and the prevalence of he or she and singular they was predominant among female students, yet the very fact that there was no statistically significant difference between the male and the female students with regard to any of the three investigated epicene pronouns could mean that the once predominant male-biased gender framework is being challenged and that there is a gradual shift towards a more inclusive understanding of gender.