English has gendered, third-person singular pronouns (he/him/his and she/her/hers) and an inanimate third-person singular pronoun (it/its), but no gender-neutral, third-person singular pronoun. Such a pronoun would have many uses. It might be used by people who identify as gender-nonconforming or by people who do not know another person’s gender, such as parents talking about an unborn child. Analyze the effects of this lack in terms of muted group theory.
What will be an ideal response?
The lack of a gender-neutral, third-person singular pronoun in English is a lexical gap. In terms of muted group theory, this kind of lexical gap can lead to the marginalization of a group of people--in this case, those who do not identify as entirely male or entirely female. Attempts have been made to create new pronouns to fill this gap (such as ae/aer/aers, ze/hir/hirs), but, linguistically speaking, it is very cognitively difficult to create a new member of a closed class of words, like pronouns. It is now popular to use they/them/theirs, but this is awkward in writing as it creates ambiguity. All of these aspects of the absence of this pronoun combine to create difficulties for gender nonconforming people.
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