A Sociolinguistic Study of Generic Pronoun Usage in Philadelphia and Minneapolis
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons IRCS Technical Reports Series Institute for Research in Cognitive Science 12-1-1997 Burglars, Babysitters, And Persons: A Sociolinguistic Study Of Generic Pronoun Usage In Philadelphia And Minneapolis Lou Ann Matossian University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports Matossian, Lou Ann, "Burglars, Babysitters, And Persons: A Sociolinguistic Study Of Generic Pronoun Usage In Philadelphia And Minneapolis" (1997). IRCS Technical Reports Series. 58. https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/58 University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report No. IRCS-98-13a. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/58 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Burglars, Babysitters, And Persons: A Sociolinguistic Study Of Generic Pronoun Usage In Philadelphia And Minneapolis Abstract To the feminists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in their quest for legal personhood, belongs the credit for identifying language as both instrument and mirror of women’s social status. Following a review of language as an issue in the U.S. woman suffrage movement, the present study documents contemporary generic pronouns in colloquial Euro-American usage. More than 1200 tokens were collected in four urban neighborhoods (Elmwood/Southwest and West Mount Airy in Philadelphia and Beltrami and Fuller in Minneapolis) by means of oral-history interviews and written questionnaires on topics of local interest. The settlement history and social networks of these four communities are presented. Statistical analysis shows that he was seldom used for epicene referents and appeared only about half the time even for masculine-generic referents. Indeed, the predominance of singular they and the near-absence of she, even for feminine-generic referents, appeared to be faits accomplis in colloquial usage. In contrast to the overtly gendered pronouns, the referential nonsolidity of singular they was conducive to pronoun switching and also explained why they was preferred for generic use even when the referent was female. Female language-users tended to avoid epicene he, and their use of singular they was also less masculine-biased than that of males. Evidence of continuing prescriptive pressure included the cross-age phenomenon of pronoun avoidance in writing when the referent was inclusive or feminine. However, correlations of age with education and occupation further suggested that a steady middleclass shift away from prescriptive “generic he” has been underway in colloquial English since at least the end of World War II. Suggested research directions include historical study of feminist linguistic thought and sociolinguistic field observations of contemporary generic pronoun usage. (Pronominal gender, agreement, woman suffrage, sociolinguistics, feminism, usage, oral history, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, English) Comments University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report No. IRCS-98-13a. This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/58 BURGLARS, BABYSITTERS, AND PERSONS: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF GENERIC PRONOUN USAGE IN PHILADELPHIA AND MINNEAPOLIS Lou Ann Matossian A DISSERTATION in Linguistics Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1997 _________________________ ________________________ Gillian Sankoff William Labov Supervisor of Dissertation Dissertation Committee _________________________ ________________________ Donald Ringe Sally McConnell-Ginet Graduate Group Chairperson Cornell University Dissertation Committee COPYRIGHT LOU ANN MATOSSIAN 1997 For Kristine Louise Hoover and in memory of Nessa Wolfson feminist and scholar We notice in language as well as in life that the male occupies both the neutral and the male position. This is another way of saying that the neutrality of objectivity and of maleness are coextensive linguistically, whereas women occupy the marked, the gendered, the different, the forever-female position. —Catharine A. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 55. iii Acknowledgments Thanks are due, first of all, to the members of my dissertation committee, Professors Gillian Sankoff and William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally McConnell-Ginet of Cornell University, with thanks for their guidance and faith in this project over the long haul. My parents, Garo S. and Mary Allerton Kilbourne Matossian, and my partner, Kristine Louise Hoover, have not only contributed financial support but are themselves lifelong examples of scholarship and dedication to personal and professional goals. I am particularly grateful to Kris for heroically transcribing, over a period of years, countless hours of interviews into reams of neatly typed pages. For last- minute computer assistance, I thank her and Steve Merjanian. Acknowledgment is also due to Patricia Rogers and Wendy Larson for the use of their personal computer to carry out the statistical analysis. Kris, Pat, and Wendy, along with Eleanor Hoover and Tim Hodgdon, were my “home” dissertation support committee in Minneapolis, providing encouragement through the ups and downs of a writer’s life. Finally, I would like to honor the memory of Professor Nessa Wolfson, late of the University of Pennsylvania, to whom this work owes much, although she did not live to see it completed. ABSTRACT BURGLARS, BABYSITTERS, AND PERSONS: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF GENERIC PRONOUN USAGE IN PHILADELPHIA AND MINNEAPOLIS LOU ANN MATOSSIAN GILLIAN SANKOFF To the feminists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in their quest for legal personhood, belongs the credit for identifying language as both instrument and mirror of women’s social status. Following a review of language as an issue in the U.S. woman suffrage movement, the present study documents contemporary generic pronouns in colloquial Euro-American usage. More than 1200 tokens were collected in four urban neighborhoods (Elmwood/Southwest and West Mount Airy in Philadelphia and Beltrami and Fuller in Minneapolis) by means of oral-history interviews and written questionnaires on topics of local interest. The settlement history and social networks of these four communities are presented. Statistical analysis shows that he was seldom used for epicene referents and appeared only about half the time even for masculine-generic referents. Indeed, the predominance of singular they and the near-absence of she, even for feminine-generic referents, appeared to be faits accomplis in colloquial usage. In contrast to the overtly gendered pronouns, the referential nonsolidity of singular they was conducive to pronoun switching and also explained why they was preferred for generic use even when the referent was female. Female language-users tended to avoid epicene he, and their use of singular they was also less masculine-biased than that of males. Evidence of continuing prescriptive pressure included the cross-age phenomenon of pronoun avoidance in writing when the referent was inclusive or feminine. However, correlations of age with education and occupation further suggested that a steady middle- class shift away from prescriptive “generic he” has been underway in colloquial English since at least the end of World War II. Suggested research directions include historical study of feminist linguistic thought and sociolinguistic field observations of contemporary generic pronoun usage. (Pronominal gender, agreement, woman suffrage, sociolinguistics, feminism, usage, oral history, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, English) Table of Contents List of Tables.....................................................................................................................vii List of Illustrations ............................................................................................................xii Preface..............................................................................................................................xiii Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One Language and Woman’s Rights, 1850–1920 .............................................................. 5 Chapter Two Third-Person Generic Pronouns: The State of the Art .............................................. 23 Chapter Three Approach to the Problem........................................................................................... 64 Chapter Four Two Philadelphia Neighborhoods............................................................................. 84 Chapter Five Two Minneapolis Neighborhoods........................................................................... 120 Chapter Six Burglars, Babysitters, and Persons.......................................................................... 144 Conclusion....................................................................................................................... 189 Appendix A Participants .............................................................................................................. 199 Appendix B Tables ...................................................................................................................... 202 Bibliography...................................................................................................................