The Effects of the Lack of a Gender-neutral Singular Pronoun on Business Communication
Open Access
Author:
Peszel, Kristina Jeanne
Area of Honors:
English (Behrend)
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Craig Andrew Warren, Thesis Supervisor Craig Andrew Warren, Thesis Honors Advisor Mary Constance Connerty, Faculty Reader
Keywords:
English corpus linguistics gendered pronouns epicene pronouns business writing technology sector feminist linguistics
Abstract:
The English language suffers from a noticeable lack of an epicene pronoun. This absence has lead speakers of English to implement several different techniques to ameliorate this gap with varying degrees of success and acceptance. Because the language’s pronoun system is based on gender, pronoun usage has been of enduring interest to feminists, culminating in feminist linguistic scholarship and advocacy. With this linguistic and sociopolitical context, this study uses corpus linguistics to examine business documents from several well-known technology companies to analyze how the technology sector approaches gender via application of gender pronouns. Samples from the corpus whose meaning is negatively affected by the lack of an epicene pronoun are then replaced with gender-neutral neologisms and singular they pronouns to study change in meaning and connotation.
