In recent months people have been stating their preferred pronouns in their social media biographies; but wouldn't it be easier if labeling wasn't necessary and people just referred to each other by a neutral pronoun? (unless told otherwise). To those people who don't conform to a set gender, pronouns are a big deal - and so they should be! A few people argue that pronouns aren't important and shouldn't have such a big deal made of them but imagine the frustration you would feel if you were constantly referred to as he/him if you were a cisgender female? Not fun; and this only one reason why pronouns are important. Non-binary people don't have it easy either as language is very black or white, you are either male or female and that's the end of it. If language were a person they'd corner you in a room and force you to give up a part of who you are just for convenience. Although within the LGBTQ community there is a plethora of terms by which people can identify themselves, this hasn't yet been integrated into today's wider society.
Gender identity also plays an important role in spoken and written language. There are many stereotypes revolving around how females speak in comparison to males and theories in regard to this. Deborah Tannen's difference theory contains the idea that males and females use language with different intentions. According to Tannen, men use language to gain status, give advice and orders. Whereas women tend to compromise more, lend support to others through their language choices and strengthen relationships. Although this is true for a lot of characters in books, modern day men and women don't conform to every generalisation made about them in this theory and neither do non-binary people. Due to this shift in characteristics, language needs to catch up and perhaps alter these stereotypes. Although they may be abundant in some contexts, there are many TV shows, books and films that disprove 'typical' behaviour.
Literature, novels and plays all use language to present characters to an audience but since it's the 21st century not every character is cisgender and this is hard to portray to an audience due to the lack of pronouns. Characters tend to conform to gender stereotypes to make it clear to the audience that they are 'typical' men or women, however novels containing non-conformist protagonists are very complex to write due to the constant repetition of names and ambiguity caused by the frequent use of they/them, him\her and he\she. Sphinx is a love story written by French author Anne Garréta but not once in the novel is a gender marker used to refer to either of the main characters. While this is the unique selling point of the narrative, other writers have said it's a monotonous task to find other ways of saying 'him/her' throughout an short story or 300 page book. Say we had a gender-neutral pronoun, it would change writing and make literature a lot easier to follow. Texts featuring androgynous robot-like characters won't be broken up by a superfluous number of forward slashes or the incorrect use of 'they/them' as a replacement for the pronoun we all desire. Isn't that the dream?
Gender identity also plays an important role in spoken and written language. There are many stereotypes revolving around how females speak in comparison to males and theories in regard to this. Deborah Tannen's difference theory contains the idea that males and females use language with different intentions. According to Tannen, men use language to gain status, give advice and orders. Whereas women tend to compromise more, lend support to others through their language choices and strengthen relationships. Although this is true for a lot of characters in books, modern day men and women don't conform to every generalisation made about them in this theory and neither do non-binary people. Due to this shift in characteristics, language needs to catch up and perhaps alter these stereotypes. Although they may be abundant in some contexts, there are many TV shows, books and films that disprove 'typical' behaviour.
Literature, novels and plays all use language to present characters to an audience but since it's the 21st century not every character is cisgender and this is hard to portray to an audience due to the lack of pronouns. Characters tend to conform to gender stereotypes to make it clear to the audience that they are 'typical' men or women, however novels containing non-conformist protagonists are very complex to write due to the constant repetition of names and ambiguity caused by the frequent use of they/them, him\her and he\she. Sphinx is a love story written by French author Anne Garréta but not once in the novel is a gender marker used to refer to either of the main characters. While this is the unique selling point of the narrative, other writers have said it's a monotonous task to find other ways of saying 'him/her' throughout an short story or 300 page book. Say we had a gender-neutral pronoun, it would change writing and make literature a lot easier to follow. Texts featuring androgynous robot-like characters won't be broken up by a superfluous number of forward slashes or the incorrect use of 'they/them' as a replacement for the pronoun we all desire. Isn't that the dream?
No comments:
Post a Comment