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Generic Pronouns in Current Academic Writing

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Generic Pronouns in Current Academic Writing UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE GENERIC PRONOUNS IN CURRENT ACADEMIC WRITING A dissertation submitted to The Faculty of Arts The Department of English Language In candidacy for the degree of Master of Philosophy by Research BY © BEATA OZIEBLOWSKA AUGUST, 1994 ProQuest Number: 11007717 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11007717 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 4* 100^5 ( M-, I GLASGOW 5 UNIVERSITY \ LIBRARY J ABSTRACT This dissertation is concerned with third-person singular pronouns used in sex-indefinite references, that is references to people, without specifying their sex. Pronouns which do not specify sex are traditionally called "generic", because generic statements about human referents discuss people in general, and therefore the sex of the referents is irrelevant. Generic pronouns are a feature of English which is currently undergoing substantial change and is a topical issue because of the present attempts to use language devoid of sexual bias. However, despite much publicity on the subject, there has been relatively little attention directed towards the generic phenomenon based on real-language data. This study looks at the extent of change in generic pronoun usage, but is mostly concerned with the generic as a grammatical and discourse phenomenon. The analysis is based on a corpus of real-language examples of generics collected from academic writing. The examples are looked at in context, which provides information about factors which might be responsible for the choice of a given pronoun as a generic. The study reveals that the generic should not be discussed merely from the point of view of "sexist/nonsexist language", but in terms of gradience of genericity, depending on different factors, like stylistic devices found in context or kind of reference. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT................................................................................................... i TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................ ii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES......................................................... v PREFACE..................................................................................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................... ix INTRODUCTION A The background ................................................................................. 1 B Some definitions of the terms used in this dissertation i) Gender and sex ......................................................................................8 ii) Generic and specific ........................................................................... 12 iii) "Indefinite generic" and "indefinite specific" pronouns .................15 iv) Generalisation, exemplification and instantiasation .......................20 v) Hypercorrection .................................................................................. 22 CHAPTER 1 THE PROBLEM WITH THE GENERIC MASCULINE AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS LI The background to the problem ............................................................. 24 1.2 Why is the masculine he criticised as a generic? ............................... 29 L3 Solutions to the generic problem ........................................................... 37 CHAPTER 2 SUMMARY OF PAST RESEARCH 21 Research on generic pronouns ............................................................. 53 2.L1 Opinions on the sexist/non-sexist language .........................................56 21.2 Are generics understood generically? ..................................................59 2.L3 What generic forms are used? ..............................................................64 CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1 Aims and general provisos .....................................................................73 3.2 The corpus and the method ...................................................................79 CHAPTER 4 DISCUSSION 4.1 General remarks .................................................................................88 4.2 The analysis of examples according to authors and domain 4.2.1 Economics ...........................................................................................90 4.2.2 Law .....................................................................................................104 4.2.3 Linguistics .......................................................................................... 119 4.2.4 Medicine............................................................................................. 129 4.2.5 Social sciences, psychology and sociology .......................................140 4.3 Ambiguous cases ............................................................................. 153 4.4 Different categories of antecedents 4.4.1 Syntactic characteristics of antecedents .......................................... 157 a) Noun phrases as antecedents ........................................................ 158 b) Pronouns as antecedents ............................................................... 159 4.4.2 Semantic characteristics of antecedents ...........................................161 a) Male-related category .................................................................. 161 b) Female-related category .............................................................. 164 c) Neutral category ............................................................................164 4. 5 Can authors’ pronoun choice be influenced by editorial policies? ... 170 a) A survey among publishers............................................................171 b) A discussion of books in the corpus according to publishers .. .174 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS 5.1 Summary of the findings ......................................................................178 5.1.1 Pronoun forms used as generics ...........................................................179 i) The masculine h e ...........................................................................179 ii) The feminine sh e..........................................................................179 iii) The neuter i t ................................................................................180 iv) The dual-gender pronoun ........................................................ 180 v) The plural th ey.............................................................................182 5.1.2 Possible reasons for the variation of different pronoun forms 183 a) Syntactic characteristics of the antecedent ................................184 b) Stereotyping ..................................185 c) Ref erences to other texts ............................................................ 187 d) The choice of stylistic devices in the context ...........................188 e) Projecting one’s own sex ............................................................. 191 f) Pronouns reflect reality .............................................................. 192 g) Kind of reference: generalisations and exemplifications 193 5.2 The picture of the generic phenomenon in the light of the findings ..................................................................................... 194 5.2.1 Is the reference made to a generic or to a specific person? ............195 5.2.2 Is the reference gender-neutral or gender-specific? ........................197 5.3 The uses of the sex-indefinite forms 5.3.1 References to hypothetical non-specific referents ........................... 199 a) Generalisations ............................................................................. 199 b) Exemplifications .........................................................................200 5.3.2 References to specific individuals ......................................................201 a) The referent’s sex is not known ..................................................201 b) The person’s sex is ambiguous .................................................... 202 c) A reference to a/each person who is a representative of a particular real-case group ............................................................203 5.4 Implications of the findings ..............................................................203 5.4.1 Gradience of genericity? ....................................................................205 5.4.2 Is ‘generics in English’ only a problem of sexist language? 207 5.5 Implications for future research ....................................................... 208 5.6 Summary ..............................................................................................210 APPENDIX 1 .............................................................................................211 APPENDIX 2 ............................................................................................223 TABLES......................................................................................................231 FIGURES...................................................................................................237
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