Gender Neutral Pronouns

There are many arguments individuals may make regarding the history of gender-neutral pronouns. Arguments may include the fact that gender-neutral language has not been around for a long time and therefore professors can do without it, as they have since the beginning of time. In fact, individuals such as professor Jordan Peterson claim, “‘I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words ‘zhe’ and ‘zher’” (Lecture 10, p. 40). In general, especially in the 21st century, there has been a rise in ‘slang’ language, which has not been around since the beginning of time, or even in last century. For instance, the term ‘selfie’ recently got popular in the past decade. Prior to the era of internet and technology, not

Thus, if ‘slang’ language can be adopted by a majority of individuals in such short time span, gender-neutral language, specifically pronouns to address self-identifying non-binary folks, can certainly be adopted and used in universities by

Indeed, this pronoun goes back to early English centuries ago and was used by the finest English language writers back in the day who certainly knew what they were doing (Lecture 10, p. 50). Moreover, the singular ‘they’ pronoun “…has been used to refer to a single person for many centuries and it wasn’t until English grammarians decided it was incorrect that this started to decline” (Lecture 10, p. 59). For example, in Jonathan Swift’s Polite Conversation, he states, “Every fool can do as they’re bid” (Lecture 10, p. 51). This was published in 1738, and the word evidently ‘they’ was used as a singular pronoun. Thus, it would be illogical to conclude that ‘they’ as a singular is not grammatically correct, as Jonathan Swift was believed to be a great writer of his time, and along with many other famous writers he used singular ‘they’ in his writing. Language has been evolving for many centuries and there are many words that have come into existence recently. Every year there are many new words that get added to dictionaries and individuals gradually adjust to them without