What's Your Pronoun?

Beyond He and She

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Pub Date 21 Jan 2020 | Archive Date 31 Dec 2019

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Description

Contextualizing one of the most pressing cultural questions of our generation, Dennis Baron reveals the untold story of how we got from he and she to zie and hir and singular- they.

Like trigger warnings and gender-neutral bathrooms, pronouns are sparking a national debate, prompting new policies in schools, workplaces, even prisons, about what pronouns to use. Colleges ask students to declare their pronouns along with their majors; corporate conferences print name tags with space to add pronouns; email signatures sport pronouns along with names and titles.

Far more than a by-product of the culture wars, gender-neutral pronouns are, however, nothing new. Pioneering linguist Dennis Baron puts them in historical context, noting that Shakespeare used singular-they; women invoked the generic use of he to assert the right to vote (while those opposed to women’s rights invoked the same word to assert that he did not include she); and people have been coining new gender pronouns, not just hir and zie, for centuries.

Based on Baron’s own empirical research, What’s Your Pronoun? chronicles the story of the role pronouns have played—and continue to play—in establishing both our rights and our identities. It is an essential work in understanding how twenty-first-century culture has evolved.

About the Author: Dennis Baron, professor emeritus of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois, has long been a national commentator on language issues, from the Washington Post to NPR and CNN. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in Champaign, Illinois.

Contextualizing one of the most pressing cultural questions of our generation, Dennis Baron reveals the untold story of how we got from he and she to zie and hir and singular- they.

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Advance Praise

"A gem of a book. Captivating and filled with insight, What’s Your Pronoun? entertains, enlightens, and pulls us joyfully into rethinking our ideas about what’s new and old in language.” - Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University

"A gem of a book. Captivating and filled with insight, What’s Your Pronoun? entertains, enlightens, and pulls us joyfully into rethinking our ideas about what’s new and old in language.” - Shirley...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781631496042
PRICE US$25.95 (USD)

Average rating from 8 members


Featured Reviews

I really liked this title. To me, the reasons why language is required to evolve are very interesting, so the topic was one that I liked reading about. the writing flowed well and there was enough "story" that I think most people could stay interested, so I kind of weighed whether I could, in fact, use it for one of my courses. Ultimately, though, I think it's a little word-nerd heavy for the composition classes I teach and most incoming freshman don't really have the patience to read something like this. Great title, though , and something I will definitely be recommending to my colleagues that teach upper level courses!

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