Study Explores Growing Use of They/Them Pronouns

More people are using they/them pronouns to refer to others when telling stories, a new scientific study has confirmed.

When describing the actions of another person, people are increasingly referring to that person as "they" or them" rather than "he" or "she," showing that the use of they/them pronouns is easily adoptable in speech, according to a new study in the journal Glossa Psycholinguistics.

This marks the first study into the use of nonbinary pronouns in spoken storytelling, the researchers said.

"Within the last decade, people have started to use 'they' as a personal pronoun, often because they identify as nonbinary or gender nonconforming," Jennifer E. Arnold, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences, said in a statement. "This usage is called non-binary 'they.' This change is new, and it is not fully understood how our mental language system is changing as a result."

People have always used "they" or "them" to refer to a single person, but this was usually only when the person's gender was unspecified or unknown. Now, however, with more cultural awareness of nonbinary people, language is shifting to increasingly refer to single people using they/them pronouns.

"We found that in a storytelling context, college students use singular 'they' for reference to a character whose pronouns are they/them in a very similar way as they use he/she for characters who use binary pronouns. Because this usage is new, our participants revealed a little difficulty but overall were fairly successful," Arnold told Newsweek.

A survey by the Pew Research Center found that an increasing number of people knew someone who went by gender-neutral pronouns, jumping from 32 percent to 46 percent among respondents under 30 and from 19 percent of 29 percent among respondents 30 to 49 years old.

"I have observed that the use of they/them as personal pronouns began to appear in mainstream culture within the last decade. This has brought a lot of attention to the use of they/them, but in fact the use of "they" as a singular pronoun has been around since the Middle Ages. This use occurs when the gender of the referent is unknown or unimportant, and is already normalized in spoken language (e.g., "Every student needs to do their homework," or "A person left their sweatshirt here"). By contrast, the newer use of they/them is to refer to someone whose personal pronouns are they/them. This newer form is hard for some people but naturally will become easier with practice," Arnold continued.

In the study, the researchers found that college-aged speakers were adept at using they/them pronouns to refer to others, using them as frequently as "he" or "she" and in the same conditions. This usage shows that the same cognitive processes are occurring when using binary and nonbinary pronouns. It also implies that they/them is becoming another pronoun that people use regularly.

"In two experiments we tested how young adults (college students) use pronouns when telling stories about binary and nonbinary characters. In both experiments we found that for this population, nonbinary pronouns are favored in the same one-character discourse contexts as binary pronouns and tend to be produced at roughly the same rate (or even a little more)," the researchers wrote in the paper. "This suggests that nonbinary they has been subsumed into the same pronoun production framework as binary singular pronouns."

The researchers added that several participants had some trouble using the nonbinary "they" for a nonbinary person, instead using a binary pronoun.

"In both experiments, there were about 8 or 9 percent misgendering errors, which in all cases emerged as the use of he/him/his for Alex. We never observed any use of an incorrect gender pronoun in the binary condition. In addition, productions of they tended to be more prosodically prominent, signaling a less fluent delivery," the researchers wrote.

The researchers said they hoped the study would help people understand how language changed with the times, and how terms could be used differently to fit new and evolving needs.

Arnold added, "Current teaching materials may not acknowledge this form, but given that young people are already using it, it must be taken into account in educational settings."

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