Groucho Marxism

A debate is currently being waged over the use of gender-neutral pronouns such as ‘they’ and ‘them’, especially when they are used to refer to individuals who identify outside the traditional gender binary. This is part of the wider debate on trans rights, which for reasons that are difficult to fathom seems to have some people foaming at the mouth with rage – particularly, although not exclusively, those on the right of the political spectrum. The contentiousness of the debate over pronouns seems bizarre, as pronouns are just a part of speech. Before this debate kicked off I suspect most of those people who are now vehemently opposed to the use of gender-neutral pronouns were barely even aware of what a pronoun is.

So, what is a pronoun? Put simply, a pronoun is just a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. The reason we have pronouns is to avoid multiple repetitions of a noun or noun phrase within a sentence, which can sound a bit clunky. Pronouns are interesting from a historical linguistics perspective because they can often be traced back many thousands of years to reconstructed proto-languages. For this reason they are sometimes referred to as the ‘Devonian rocks’ of historical linguistics. For example, the first-person singular subjective pronoun ‘I’ can be traced all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, and other pronouns such as the now obsolete second-person singular pronoun ‘thou’ can likely be traced back even further.

Pronouns are very familiar to us as languages that descend from Proto-Indo-European, which includes most of the languages of Europe, Iran, and Northern India, have them in abundance. However, there are languages that make far less use of pronouns. Speakers of east Asian languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, frequently omit pronouns and rely on context to fill in the gaps. Even speakers of some Indo-European languages, such as Spanish, Italian, and Hindi, often drop the subject pronoun because the verb conjugation indicates the subject. There are languages with no gendered third-person pronouns, such as Turkish, Hungarian, and Finnish. There are even languages that apparently have little to no personal pronouns at all, such as the Arhuaco language of South America.

This raises the question of whether it is possible for a language to have no pronouns whatsoever. Some linguists speculate that the South American language Pirahã may have once lacked pronouns. The fact that the pronoun system of Pirahã is incredibly simple and has a very low functional load suggests that the language may not have had pronouns at all at an earlier stage. Still, I am not aware of any attested language that lacks pronouns completely. But that doesn’t mean that such a language could not exist. How would a language work without pronouns? The obvious way would be to simply substitute back the relevant noun or noun phrase; but as noted above, this can make a language sound quite clunky, and is also inefficient.

A better approach would be to restructure language so that pronouns are not needed. For example, instead of saying ‘I am tired’ or ‘he is tired’ we could say something equivalent to ‘tiredness is occurring here’ or ‘tiredness is occurring there’. Such constructions sound ridiculous to our ear, but that’s only because we are not used to them. Restructuring language like this would have several advantages. It would help rid us of the illusions of self, ego, and free will, which pronouns subconsciously reinforce – particularly first-person pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘me’. It would also help rid us of the subject-object distinction: the erroneous feeling we all have of separation of the observer (the subject) from the thing being observed (the object).

Realistically, such a drastic restructure of language is unlikely to happen. Removing gendered pronouns seems a much more achievable goal, particularly as several languages function perfectly well without them (as noted above). This would also have several advantages. Using gender-neutral language affirms a person’s identity, which is a form of basic courtesy and respect. It acknowledges and includes individuals who do not identify in a binary way as male or female, making them feel seen and valued. Avoiding assumptions about a person’s gender helps to break down rigid expectations about roles and occupations. Gender-neutral pronouns help shift the focus from gender to an individual’s qualities, skills, and contributions.

The fact that moving to gender-neutral pronouns would have such advantages raises the question of why some people are so opposed to the idea. One theory is that people use opposition to this as a way of expressing their transphobia without explicitly expressing it. There is definitely some truth to this, but I also think there is more to it. From an early age we are conditioned into thinking that all human beings can be neatly divided into one of two genders, to the extent that this becomes ingrained in our psyche. Suggesting that we don’t need to categorize people in this way feels jarring to many as it involves shattering a core belief. This, I think, explains why many people act with such irrational anger about moving to gender-neutral pronouns, despite the obvious benefits that would result.