Everybody does, dont they?

A Corpus Study of
a Nonsexist Personal Pronoun in Spoken British
English
Martin Persson
C Paper in Linguistics
Uppsala University, Department of English
Supervisor: Pia Norell
December 17, 2006
Abstract
This paper deals with the use of third person pronouns with generic refer-
ence to compound indenite pronouns in spoken British English. Previous
research on this topic shows a decline in the use of the masculine generic
he, which some may consider sexist, and an increased use of the gender-
neutral they, which is one of the proposed nonsexist alternatives to generic
he. The paper contains two introductory sections which give appropriate
background information on language and gender, sexist and nonsexist lan-
guage and pronominal reference. In the third section, the ndings of the
study are presented. The study was carried out by investigating the fre-
quency of the third person pronouns he, she and they with reference to the
indenite compound pronouns (e.g. anybody) in spoken British English. The
data were collected from the British National Corpus, a corpus of contempo-
rary British English. The study shows that they is used in a clear majority
of the cases (about 95 percent), and that generic he is very infrequent, even
in formal registers. This paper also suggests that contemporary grammars
probably lag behind actual usage by stating that they used singularly and
generically is a feature of informal language only.
Contents
1 Introduction 2
1.1 Aim and Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Previous Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Material and Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2 Background 6
2.1 Language and Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Sexism in English and the Purpose of Nonsexist Language . . 8
2.3 Pronominal Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.4 The Personal Pronouns of English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.5 Indenite Compound Pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.6 Generic He . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.7 Singular They . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3 Presentation of Results 14
3.1 3PPs with antecedent Anybody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2 3PPs with antecedent Anyone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.3 3PPs with antecedent Everybody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.4 3PPs with antecedent Everyone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.5 3PPs with antecedent Nobody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.6 3PPs with antecedent Somebody . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.7 3PPs with antecedent Someone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.8 Distribution of 3PPs over Contextual Domains . . . . . . . . 21
4 Concluding Remarks 22
1
1 Introduction
The quest for a gender-neutral third person pronoun has been going on
for a long time. Since the 1880s, when a gender-neutral pronoun became a
popular discussion topic in literary academic journals, numerous suggestions
have been put forward to ll the gap in the English pronoun system (Baron
1985), whose forms are gender-neutral except for in the third person singular.
There we have to choose between she or he when referring to human beings.
Or are these really the only options we have? According to the standard, to
the authoritative grammars, they are, if we do not want to be considered
incorrect. But how do people in general, actual speakers of English, ll this
gap, the missing gender-neutral third person singular pronoun?
Studies show that the use of the so called singular they (henceforth re-
ferred to as sing. they), where the usually plural pronoun they have singular
reference, is becoming increasingly popular. Sing. they is used primarily with
generic reference (referring to people in general), as in (1), but it is also ob-
served with specic reference, as (2), a dialogue from an American TV series
(The L Word), is an example of.
(1) Everyone should mind their own business.
1
(2) Tania I didnt even ask you, why are you here? Are you OK?
Alice Yeah, uh, Im just.. well.. visiting a friend.
Tania I hope theyre alright.
Alice Yeah, theyre.. I mean, theyre getting better.
This paper presents a study of the frequency of generic sing. they in
spoken British English (from now on referred to as BrE). This introduc-
tory section presents the aim of the study, previous research on the topic,
the primary material and methodology, and denitions of some important
terms. In Section 2, a general background is given, dealing with language
and gender, sexist and nonsexist language, personal and indenite pronouns,
generic he and sing. they. The results of the study are presented in Section
3, and nal concluding remarks are made in Section 4.
1
Authors own example.
2
1.1 Aim and Scope
The aim of this study is to examine the frequency of sing. they in spo-
ken BrE. Apart from looking at the overall frequency of this grammatical
feature, a second purpose of this study is to nd out if sing. they is more
frequent with some indenite pronouns (i.e. someone, somebody, everyone,
everybody, anyone, anybody and nobody
2
) as antecedents than with others.
A third purpose is to investigate if sing. they is conned mostly to informal
language, an assertion made by some contemporary grammars (Greenbaum
1996, Quirk et al. 1985). Therefore, formal and informal speech will be com-
pared as regards the use of sing. they.
The study is limited to sing. they with reference to indenite compound
pronouns only, as in (1) above. Although it occurs occasionally with reference
also to common-gender nouns (as in (2) above) as well, such occurrences are
not as easily identiable in the data as where the indenite pronouns can
be used as indicators, often triggering generic pronouns.
Furthermore, the study is limited to spoken BrE, and hence, neither
other varieties of English (e.g. American) nor written language will be looked
into.
My hypothesis is that sing. they is very frequent in spoken British En-
glish, and undoubtedly used more often than generic he. Regarding formal
and informal spoken language, I doubt there is much of a dierence when it
comes to the use of sing. they, since previous research (which I will present
below) shows a general decline in generic he and an increase in the use of
sing. they. Regarding the question if sing. they is more frequent with some
indenite pronouns than with others, my hypothesis is that they might be
more common in co-reference with everybody and everyone, since they are
often plural in meaning (see Section 2.5).
1.2 Previous Research
Previous research on the topic often shows a preferred use of sing. they over
generic he.
2
No one gave too few hits in the corpus, and was therefore discarded.
3
Baranowski (2002) investigated the use of generic pronouns in American
and British newspapers. He concludes that he is no longer the preferred
singular epicene
3
pronoun in English, and even that singular they is now
the predominant form (2002:295) in cases where before you would have used
the masculine generic he. Baranowski also observes that American writers
tend to be more conservative as regards generic pronouns, and less likely to
use sing. they than British writers.
Pauwels (2003) looked into generic pronominal use in spoken Australian
English. She compared radio programs and parliamentary debates from the
1960s, 1970s and 1990s. She observes a steep decline in the use of generic
he and a signicant turnaround for singular they (2003:563), probably
encouraged by the second-wave feminist movement in the 70s and 80s, which
drew attention to and increased peoples awareness of sexist language.
In another study, Pauwels (2003) explored the use of generic pronouns
by (Australian) academics. Again researching spoken material, this time
focusing on university lectures, she conrms the marginalisation of generic
he
4
. Interestingly, Pauwels also found that the academics preferred choice
of generic pronoun was he or she, whereas other speakers would use sing.
they most frequently (2003:564).
Although a good deal of research has been carried out on generic pro-
nouns, it seems to cover mostly written language, and, in some cases, formal
speech. Spoken BrE has been sparsely investigated in this area. Therefore,
the focus of this study, spoken BrE, formal and informal, seems justied.
1.3 Material and Method
This study uses the British National Corpus (BNC) as its primary material.
This is a corpus of contemporary spoken and written British English. The
total size of the corpus is 100 million words, and the spoken part, which this
study examines, constitutes 10 million (i.e. 10%) of these
5
.
The spoken data of the BNC is divided into 4 registers, or domains
3
Unisex
4
In Pauwels study, it constitutes only approx. 12% of the generic pronouns found.
5
Corpus information was retrieved from About the British National Corpus.
4
as they are labelled in the corpus: Educational/Informative, Business,
Public/Institutional, and Leisure. This categorisation makes it possi-
ble to separate informal (Educational/Informative and Leisure) and formal
(Business and Public/Institutional) speech in the collected data, which is
one of the aims of this study.
The corpus was searched for the third person pronouns he, she and they
(and their inected forms
6
) following a compound indenite pronoun (e.g.
anybody or someone) in a span of 7 words. This was done with one indenite
pronoun at a time. The queries were randomly thinned down to give 150 hits
per indenite pronoun, given the limited time for the study. Then followed
the time-consuming process of manually singling out the hits where the
indenite pronoun was the actual antecedent of the personal pronoun, i.e.
identifying personal pronouns in co-reference with the indenite pronoun.
Hits where the personal pronoun had another antecedent than the indenite
pronoun were discarded. The results (now containing only personal pronouns
with reference to the indenite pronoun in question) were then ltered on
dierent domains (i.e. formal/informal).
1.4 Terminology
The term gender-neutral is used for pronouns not denoting gender, for ex-
ample they. For pronouns denoting gender, the term gender-specic is used.
The terms gender-inclusive and gender-exclusive are also important when
discussing pronominal reference. They signal if the reference of the pronoun
in question includes both genders, or excludes one of them. The basic terms
gender, sex, and sexism are dened in Section 2.1.
A general distinction is made between generic and specic reference of
pronouns. Pronouns with specic reference point to a specic person or thing
in the text or in the context, whereas pronouns with generic reference point
more generally to people (or things). Most of the pronouns discussed in
this paper have generic reference. Further denitions of terms dealing with
pronominal reference are presented in Section 2.3.
6
i.e. the subjective, objective, possessive, and reexive forms were included for each
3PP.
5
Abbreviations used in this paper include 3PP for third person pronoun
(i.e. he, she, it and they), the BNC for the British National Corpus, and
BrE for British English. Singular they is shortened to sing. they.
2 Background
2.1 Language and Gender
When discussing language and gender, it is rst necessary to explain ones
denition of the term gender, in order to avoid ambiguity and confusion.
In society, gender is the broad term for the dierent social roles of women
and men. In contrast to sex, which is a solely biological feature, gender
is something that is learntit is socially constructed. As Talbot (1998:7)
puts it, people acquire characteristics which are perceived as masculine
and feminine. The words feminine and masculine can be said to denote
gender, whereas the corresponding words denoting sex are female and male.
Since we live in a society in which sex dierence imply gender dierence
(e.g. that a female should be feminine), the distinction between gender and
sex (i.e. the distinction between what is social and what is biological) is quite
often forgotten, or ignored. The fact that people confuse biological dier-
ences between women and men with socially constructed gender dierences
is unfortunate, according to Talbot (1998:9), since it prevents women and
men from breaking free from their traditional gender roles. Cameron (1993)
points out that it should not be forgotten, when discussing gender roles,
that the feminine and the masculine roles are not only dierentbut also
unequal. She claims that there is inferiority built into the feminine role, and
superiority built into the masculine (Cameron 1993:100). This fundamental
unbalance between the roles of women and men in society is generally re-
ferred to as sexism. Sexist language will be discussed further on in the paper,
but let us rst take a look at the dierent roles gender plays in linguistics.
In language, we nd grammatical gender and natural gender. Latin,
French, Italian and German are examples of languages with grammatical
gender. In these languages, all nouns are placed into gender categories, and
6
this classication then governs the words grammatical behaviour, such as
inectional endings, adjective agreements, article use and pronoun choice
(Cameron 1992). In German and Latin
7
, there are 3 categories of grammat-
ical gender: feminine, masculine, and neuter. French and Italian have only
2 categories, feminine and masculine. But these are nothing but abstract
grammatical categories, which have little to do with biological sex
8
, since
apparently sexless words can be masculine or feminine, as is the case with
the Italian mela (apple), which is feminine, and gelato (ice cream), which is
masculine.
In English, however, we nd only natural gender. Natural gender is when
the biological sex of a person determines certain grammatical features, as is
the case with the English third person singular pronouns. If you are speaking
about a girl, you will use the pronoun she and if you are speaking about a
boy, the appropriate pronoun is he. Non-human words, such as book, knitting
and rice, will go with the pronoun it. Animals sometimes go with it and
sometimes with he or she, depending on their relationship to the speaker
9
.
Natural gender also sometimes determines the ending of words, for example
in widower/widow, host/hostess and waiter/waitress. There are also words of
common gender, which refer to a human (animate) being of either sex, such
as student, cousin and friend. Gender with these words is revealed by choice
of pronoun (She is my friend), or by adding a gender-specic adjective, as
in male cousin (Crystal 1984).
Why is language and gender studies important? The answer to this ques-
tion depends on what role we believe language to have in society. The Sapir-
Worf hypothesis suggests that language is a mirror of society, a mirror which
not merely reects society, but also inuences it (Chalker and Weiner 1998).
The belief that structures we nd in society, we will also nd in language, is
widely accepted among linguists (feminist or not), and it initiated the study
of sociolinguistics. Applying the theory of language as a mirror to gender in-
7
Latin is the language from which grammatical gender originally derives.
8
It is not true, really, to say that grammatical gender has nothing at all to do with
social gender, Cameron (1993:91 .), for instance, problematises this assertion.
9
i.e. pets are usually called he or she by their owners.
7
equalities, Talbot (1998) recognises the importance of language and gender
studies (from a feminist perspective) in two ways. First, by looking upon
language as a mirror of society, studies on language and gender can help us
identify and understand gender relations and social power structures. Sec-
ond, if we believe that language not only reects society, but also has an
inuence on it, studies on language and gender may help us to raise peoples
awareness [of sexism] and stimulate social change (Talbot 1998:15).
2.2 Sexism in English and the Purpose of Nonsexist Lan-
guage
Before I move on to describing generic he and sing. they in detail, let us
rst take a brief look at some linguistic features of English which may be
considered sexist (i.e. indicators of male dominance), and some suggested
nonsexist solutions for these.
The rst example of sexist English that the authors of The Handbook of
Nonsexist Writing (Miller and Swift 2001) take up is the generic use of man
to refer to people of both sexes, as is the case with the sentence Man is a
dreamer. Here, man refers to the human species in general, and not only to
males. This leaves women linguistically in the shade of men, being reduced
only to variants of males. A nonsexist rephrasing of this sentence could
be Human beings are dreamers.
Another area in which linguistic sexism appears is occupational titles.
Many traditionally male dominated occupations have titles ending in the
sux -man, as in reman, sherman and policeman. Here, Miller and Swift
(2001) propose using the gender-neutral re ghter, sher and police ocer
instead.
There are also occupations where, even if the occupational title in itself
does not contain a masculine ax (e.g. -man), the title is traditionally un-
derstood as masculine. Sexist norms have created a need for indicators
of women in these occupations, such as lady doctor and woman writer or
authoress (Talbot 1998).
If we turn to social titles, we see another sexist pattern. Women are
8
addressed according their marital status (Miss or Mrs), whereas men are
not (they have only Mr). In this eld, however, the nonsexist alternative Ms,
which is used by women (whether married or not) who refuse to be dened
in terms of their marital status, has been very successful, and is now the
unmarked female title in the United States (Cameron 1993).
Cameron (1993) identies a general sexist pattern in mens addressing of
women. Men commonly address women as subordinates, by calling them by
their rst names or using so called endearment terms, e.g. dear or honey. A
man can choose to call any woman dear unless she is directly in authority
over him, but if a woman calls a man dear she is normally either older
than him or intimate with him (1993:105).
Lexicographically, there seem to be more insulting words for women than
for men. Spender (1985:15) refers to a study which found 220 words for a
sexually promiscuous female, but only 20 for a sexually promiscuous male.
This, according to Cameron, reects the sexist idea that women should
have no sexual desires whereas men should be insatiable (1993:108).
Few people believe nonsexist language to be the one method with which
to ght gender inequalities, but some acknowledge its inuence on society,
and decide to ght sexism linguistically as well as in other elds. We can de-
mand equal pay and nonsexist language too, Cameron (1993:2) concludes.
2.3 Pronominal Reference
One way of dening pronouns is to say that they replace nouns, or stand
instead of nouns. When taking a closer look at pronouns, however, we nd
that it is more a question of reference than of substitution (Wales 1996). Pro-
nouns can be used to substitute a noun, by means of avoiding repetition,
for example, as in (3) below, but they need not always do that.
(3) Sarah sat down on the sofa. She was exhausted.
10
(4) I wouldnt do that if I were you.
(5) It is nice to have a cup of coee in the morning.
10
Authors own examples.
9
Consider example (4) above, where neither I nor you can be said to
substitute something. Instead, we can talk about reference. In (4), I refers
to the person speaking, and you refers to the addressee. They have exophoric
(or contextual ) reference, referring to something outside the text. In (3)
above, we have an example of endophoric (or textual ) reference, reference
within the text. Here, she refers back to Sarah. Backwards reference is called
anaphoric reference. The pronoun she refers to its antecedent, Sarah, which
refers to the actual person (exophorically) Sarah. But we can also consider
both the pronoun she and the (proper) noun Sarah to refer to the person
Sarah. They are then said to be co-referential with each other. Pronouns
referring forwards in the text have cataphoric reference, which (5) above is
an example of.
2.4 The Personal Pronouns of English
Table 1: The Personal Pronouns of English (subjective case)
Person Singular Plural
1st I We
2nd You You
3rd He, She, It They
Table 1 lists the English personal pronouns. We can see that it is only
in the third person singular that the standard system lacks a gender-neutral
form for human reference. But people do not only use the strict systems of
grammarians when they produce language. Even in the category of pronouns,
which is considered to be a closed word class (where we do not normally take
in new words), there is a considerable amount of variation and change. Wales
(1996:xii) claims that:
Users of English have always created their own systems of
pronouns or rules of use for their own needs and strategies
. . . often in complete disregard of grammarians notions of logic.
Therefore, instead of treating pronouns prescriptively, Wales argues, it is
10
more rewarding to look at them from a descriptive perspective.
If we take the case of sing. they, for example, it is only recently that
contemporary grammars have accepted it, even though it has been used by
a great many English speakers for a long time (see Section 2.7). This reects,
according to Wales (1996:126), the inheritance of prescriptivism on even
contemporary grammars.
There is another pronoun in English which, similarly to they, started
by having plural-only reference, but expanded to cover singular reference as
well, namely you. Nowadays, we do not nd this form strange or confusing,
and this shows that pronouns are not a xed grammatical category at all,
but a living word class which constantly changes.
2.5 Indenite Compound Pronouns
The indenite compound pronouns are any-/every-/no-/some- attached to
-body or -one. They are indenite in that they [lack] the deniteness of
reference inherent in personal, reexive, possessive, and demonstrative pro-
nouns (Chalker and Weiner 1998:200).
The indenite compound pronouns are singular in form, but often plural
in meaning, as Baron (1985:193) puts it. This is especially true for everybody
and everyone, which notionally . . . clearly denotes more than one person
(Wales 1996:128).
The indenite compounds can also vary in reference. Sometimes they
point to a specic person (or specic persons) in the context, but more
often they have generic reference, pointing to people in general. Examples of
indenite pronouns with generic as well as specic reference will be presented
in Section 3.
2.6 Generic He
One grammatical feature in English which has acquired much attention in
the debate on sexist language is the so called generic he. Generic he is the
traditional use of a masculine 3PP to refer to persons of both sexes (or of
either sex), as in the following sentence:
11
(6) Everyone holds his breath for half a minute.
11
Historically, this use has been prescribed by grammarians since the 18th
century, when the authoritative grammarians decided that only one pro-
noun, the masculine, was the correct form to use for generic reference
(referring to people in general) (Wales 1996). At that time, several options
for making generic reference (including sing. they, as we shall see further
on) were available. But the grammarians, who were preoccupied with rules
of concord or agreement on the basis of Latin models of grammatical
description (Wales 1996:112), decided in favour of generic he, which, it
was argued, agreed with a singular gender-neutral antecedent (In (6), the
antecedent is everyone) both in person (third) and in number (singular).
Critics of generic he, however, have argued that even though it agreed
in person and number, it disagreed in gender (Baranowski 2002:378). The
grammarians of the 18th century maintained that, as described by Wales
(1996:113):
generic he was semantically justiable on the grounds that the
language (like the culture) was indeed biased in favour of males,
who were the superior . . . or the worthier sex, and that fe-
male reference could be subordinated to male reference of this
kind.
But many women (some of them feminists) have refused to accept this
sexist convention (c.f. also the case of generic man discussed above), feeling
excluded in reference. Wales (1996:114) claims that the pronoun he is so
crucially important for male reference in modern English, and can therefore
not be a true generic, without male connotations whatsoever. She calls
it pseudo-generic he, emphasising the weak semantic gender-inclusiveness
of generic he.
There are several alternatives, more or less convenient (and more or less
accepted), if you want to avoid using the masculine generic. These include
sing. they, he or she, (s)he or s/he, generic she, pluralising the sentence, and
11
Authors own example.
12
neologisms such as thon or hesh. Let us now take a closer look at one of
these alternatives, namely sing. they.
2.7 Singular They
The use of they with singular reference can be traced back to the 16th
century. It has been well established in informal usage for centuries (Wales
1996:126). Baron (1985) lists some major English writers who have used
sing. they extensively, among them Jane Austen
12
.
But what are the advantages of sing. they over the other alternatives to
generic he? Wales (1996:126) sums it up as follows:
It is certainly pronounceable [c.f. writing-only variants such as
s/he], well established and non-alien [c.f. hesh and thon], nor-
mally unstressed and unfocussed, and brief . . . it avoids cum-
bersome alternatives [c.f. he or she], and it is itself also dicult
to avoid across clause boundaries and in tag questions.
The main advantage of sing. they over generic he is, according to Wales
(1996), its unmarkedness for gender. It lls the gap of a gender-neutral
singular 3PP conveniently.
In the previous section, I discussed the opinions on generic pronouns of
the grammarians of the 18th and 19th century. But what about contempo-
rary grammars, what do they say about sing. they? Greenbaum (1996:20)
sees sing. they as a convenient way of avoiding a (possibly sexist) generic
he. Moreover, he considers sing. they to be mostly a feature of (informal)
speech, but predicts it becoming [increasingly acceptable] as the generic
singular even in formal style, in the future. Quirk et al. (1985:342) recog-
nise the use of sing. they with generic reference, but point out its informality
and deance of strict number concord. Echoing Wales (1996), they also
note that they is practically unavoidable in tag questions and across clause-
boundaries.
12
See http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html for further information
about sing. they in Jane Austens works.
13
3 Presentation of Results
Out of a total of 1050 hits (150 for each indenite pronoun investigated) in
the BNC, 382 hits where the 3PP referred to the indenite pronoun were
found
13
. Table 2 below shows the distribution of 3 dierent 3PPs (they, he,
and she) with the 7 indenite pronouns investigated
14
as antecedents. As can
be seen, they is the predominant 3PP to refer to indenite pronouns, being
used in nearly 95 percent of the cases. He is only used in about 4.5 percent
of the cases, and she occurs only three times, which makes a percentage of
about 0.8.
Table 2: 3PPs with an indenite pronoun as antecedent
Pronoun Number (382) %
They 362 94.76
He 17 4.45
She 3 0.79
3.1 3PPs with antecedent Anybody
In Table 3 below, the distribution of 3PPs with anteceding anybody is pre-
sented. 54 of 56 3PPs were they, constituting about 96 percent of the total
3PPs. In the remaining 2 cases, we nd he, which was used in just under 4
percent of the cases.
Table 3: 3PPs with antecedent anybody
Pronoun Number (56) %
They 54 96.43
He 2 3.57
She 0 0
13
In the other cases, the 3PP had further anaphoric reference to a specic person in the
context.
14
These were anybody, anyone, everybody, everyone, somebody, someone, and nobody.
14
Some examples from the data are:
(7) Jean Oh I wouldnt mind but I wouldnt marry anybody
Brenda You might live with him.
(KBF 872223)
(8) No sympathy for anybody like that, they know what theyre
doing. Theyre not much cop when they can open their legs like
that.
(KSS 502122)
In (7), he is used to refer to anybody. From the context, however, we gather
that Jean and Brenda are discussing future male partners, and thus the
reference of he (and, accordingly, the reference of anybody) is limited to
men only. The pronouns are generic in the sense that it can refer to any
man, but they are specic in the sense that it refers to men only, being
gender-exclusive rather than gender-inclusive.
(8) is an example of sing. they, where anybody like that and they have
co-reference to the same exophoric person or persons.
3.2 3PPs with antecedent Anyone
Table 4 shows the distribution of 3PPs with anteceding anyone. Again, about
96 percent of the 3PPs are they. Also similarly to anybody, about 4 percent
of the 3PPs are he.
Table 4: 3PPs with antecedent anyone
Pronoun Number (52) %
They 50 96.15
He 2 3.85
She 0 0
Let us have a look at these two cases of generic he:
15
(9) Anyone can set his newspaper in the New York Times lettering
style without paying the Times a nickle <laugh>.
(GYU 153)
(10) You could not . . . go down er a pit and say to anyone down a pit,
and say to anyone down a pit, that hes not a miner.
(KS2 508)
Both (9) and (10) are examples of a generic use of he. Here, the reference
to traditionally male-dominated occupations (typesetters (9) and miners
(10)) is probably what triggers the use of a masculine generic pronoun
15
.
3.3 3PPs with antecedent Everybody
Table 5 shows the distribution of 3PPs with everybody as antecedent. Of the
70 3PPs found, all of them were they. Neither he nor she with reference to
everybody was found.
Table 5: 3PPs with antecedenteverybody
Pronoun Number (70) %
They 70 100.00
He 0 0
She 0 0
Below are some examples from this part of the data:
(11) Everybody does, dont they?
(KCL 1514)
15
c.f the use of occupational titles discussed in Section 2.2.
16
(12) And nobody knew anything about spores or farmers lung or an
Everybody are very conscious and they wear masks when theyre
feeding hay now.
(HEM 389)
The plural verb forms of (11) and (12) conrms a strong plural mean-
ing within everybody (as discussed in Section 2.5), and this also makes the
choice of a plural 3PP more logical. Also, both (11) and (12) exemplify the
assumption made by contemporary grammarians (see Section 2.7) that it is
hard to avoid sing. they in tag questions (11) and across clause boundaries
(12). Everybody does, doesnt he, or Everybody are very conscious and he
wears masks would not seem as natural as (11) and (12) do.
3.4 3PPs with antecedent Everyone
Table 6 shows the distribution of 3PPs with reference to everyone. 60 such
3PPs were found, 59 they (about 98 percent), and 1 he (just under 2 percent).
Table 6: 3PPs with antecedent everyone
Pronoun Number (60) %
They 59 98.33
He 1 1.67
She 0 0
Let us have a look at some examples of they:
(13) Paul Last time I went in everyone got called!
Terry Yep, they all that <unclear>
(F7G 68586)
(14) So everyone, everyone has his own
(KCV 1370)
17
(15) What Im trying to say is, everyone joins for their own dierent
reasons, you cant generalise that.
(K74 264)
Again, the plural meaning of everyone, similarly to everybody, seems
strong. An indicator of this is (13), in which everyone is referred to as they
all. It can be argued that when he is used, as in (14), it stresses the singular-
ity of the separate units of the indenite pronoun. This is not very probable,
however, since we nd more cases with they expressing this singularity of
meaning, as in (15).
3.5 3PPs with antecedent Nobody
Table 7 shows the distribution of 3PPs with nobody as antecedent. All of
the 38 3PPs found were they. Neither he nor she with reference to nobody
was found.
Table 7: 3PPs with antecedent nobody
Pronoun Number (38) %
They 38 100.00
He 0 0
She 0 0
(16) below shows the use of the plural reexive with reference to nobody.
(16) . . . nobody regards themselves as aged these days do they?
(G4F 65)
3.6 3PPs with antecedent Somebody
In Table 8, the distribution of 3PPs with anteceding somebody is presented.
51 such 3PPs were found. 47 (about 92 percent) of these were they, and
3 (about 6 percent) of them he. Interestingly, we also nd one she with
reference to the indenite pronoun in question (see (17) below).
18
Table 8: 3PPs with antecedent somebody
Pronoun Number (51) %
They 47 92.16
He 3 5.88
She 1 1.96
Let us again consider some examples from the data:
(17) I asked somebody the way out and she oered to show me . . .
(KBP 1252)
(18) I mean I actually had somebody last Friday, they told me what
to do, a four letter word, they told me what to do, and put the
phone down.
(JSN 745)
(19) . . . to deprive somebody of the right to express their opinions in
public would be regarded as an infringement of his civil liberties,
which would be unthinkable in a republican erm situation.
(KRH 2403)
In (17), somebody is already specic, referring anaphorically to a specic
person who was asked for the way out by the speaker. The fact that the
person asked was a female triggers the feminine 3PP here. However, in a
similar case of somebody with specic reference, (18), they is the 3PP used.
Here it is the somebody from last Friday who is being discussed.
Moving on to a more generic usage of somebody, (19) is an interesting
example of a speaker rst using they and then switching to he. The speakers
switching to the masculine 3PP may perhaps be due to the strong formal
xedness of the expression civil liberties.
19
3.7 3PPs with antecedent Someone
The distribution of 3PPs with anteceding someone is presented in Table 9.
Out of 55 3PPs found, 44 (80 percent) were they, 9 (about 16 percent) were
he, and 2 (almost 4 percent) were she.
Table 9: 3PPs with antecedent someone
Pronoun Number (55) %
They 44 80.00
He 9 16.36
She 2 3.64
Let us look at some of these cases in detail:
(20) Erm, and it can, it can happen overnight, cant it, from some
someone is er, hes hes hes a bit of the one with the ladies.
(KGP 1071)
(21) no, when you get someones relative phoning up because theyve
just been crushed under a lump of machinery, thats is very
fraught.
(KE3 3814)
(22) eventually after some searching they nominated someone who
then resigned from her post
(F7C 1259)
(23) Someone put her poo in my locker
16
(KPA 1844)
(20) is similar to (7) in that it is gender-exclusive. Its reference is meant to
include males only, someone who is a bit of the one with the ladies.
16
The author is aware of the obscene content of this utterance, but it had to be included
in the discussion, since it is one out of two cases of she in this section.
20
In (21), a certain ambiguity evolves. Is they referring to someone, some-
ones relative, or both? Who was crushed under a lump of machinery in
this sentence? This kind of ambiguity would have been the same with a
masculine 3PP, however, and happens from time to time with anaphoric
pronominal reference, especially in speech (Wales 1996). Here we have to
use our knowledge of the world (Wales 1996:22) to make the assumption
that it is probably the someone who was crushed in (21), since the relative
would probably not be on the phone if she herself had been the one crushed.
(22) and (23) are the two cases of she found in this part of the data.
In (22), the reference of the 3PP is clearly specic, pointing backwards to
the person who was nominated and then resigned. The specic reference
triggers a gender-specic 3PP here, and is similar to (17) in Section 3.6.
In (23), the indenite compound someone is the antecedent of the 3PP
her (the 3PP has no further anaphoric reference). But here, the reference
of the 3PP is probably meant to include females only, since she does not
have the same strong tradition of generic reference as he has. However, the
possibility that this example of she is generic and gender-inclusive cannot be
completely eliminated. It could also be argued that the 3PP here has specic
reference, that the speaker knows who put the thing in the locker, and
that it is a female, which triggers the feminine 3PP (similarly to (22) and
(17)). Unfortunately, the conversation from which this utterance is taken is
very fragmentary, and the context does not provide any extra information
as regards the reference of this 3PP.
3.8 Distribution of 3PPs over Contextual Domains
Table 10: 3PPs with an indenite pronoun as antecedent, distribution over
domains
Pronoun Business (67) Edu./Informative (60) Leisure (54) Publ./Inst. (46)
They 65 53 52 45
He 1 7 2 1
She 1 0 0 0
21
The BNC has 4 categories of contextual domains: Business, Educa-
tional/Informative, Leisure and Public/Institutional. Of these, Business and
Public/Institutional can be considered formal, whereas the other two are
informal. Table 10 shows how the co-referential 3PPs of this study were dis-
tributed over contextual domains. Not all hits were tagged for domain, but
227 out of 382 hits carried this tag.
The table shows that they is the dominating 3PP in all four categories,
and is not at all conned only to informal usage, as some contemporary
grammars claim (see Section 2.7). He occurs most frequently in the Educa-
tional/Informative domain, which suggests that he in this study was used
more frequently in informal contexts than in formal ones.
4 Concluding Remarks
This study had three aims. The rst aim was to investigate the frequency of
sing. they in spoken BrE. The study shows that sing. they is undoubtedly the
most common 3PP used in co-reference with indenite compound pronouns.
They was used in 94.76 percent of the cases, which clearly conrms (and
possibly even goes further than) my hypothesis that it should be common.
Another aim of this study was to nd out if there is a dierence in
frequency of sing. they over dierent indenite compound pronouns as an-
tecedents. Here, my hypothesis was that it would be more frequent with
everybody or everyone as antecedent, because of their strong plural charac-
ter. The study proves this to be true, with they being the only 3PP used
with everybody, and in 98.33 percent of the cases with everyone. Interest-
ingly, it is also the only 3PP used with nobody, which might suggest that
nobody also has strong semantic plurality. The gures are slightly lower for
sing. they with anybody/anyone (around 96 percent) and somebody/someone
(between 80 and 92 percent), from which the conclusion can be drawn that
these indenite compound pronouns are used more often with specic refer-
ence, thus triggering gender-exclusive instead of gender-inclusive 3PPs.
The third aim of this study was to investigate if sing. they mostly is
used in informal contexts, as our contemporary grammars claim. This study
22
shows that this is not the case. Sing. they is the dominating generic 3PP in
both informal and formal contexts. The domain in which this study found
most generic he (which is claimed to be the formal alternative), is actually
an informal one, namely Educational/Informative. Even though this study
might not be reliable as regards contextual domains (too few hits on generic
he), it raises doubts about the contemporary grammars claim that sing.
they is only an informal generic pronoun.
This study has shown that the nonsexist 3PP they, used singularly, is
the pronoun which BrE speakers prefer in co-reference with an indenite
compound pronoun. It serves the purpose of a gap-ller for a singular
gender-neutral 3PP, and is on its way to rule out the earlier prescribed
pseudo-generic he.
For future research, it would be worthwhile investigating sing. they with
specic singular reference to common-gender nouns, as in the example from
The L Word, (2) in Section 1. It may also be interesting to carry out stud-
ies comparing British and American English on the use of sing. they. How
does, compared to the British, everybody in America choose their generic
pronouns?
23
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