正确使用他们/them代词
A Carolina study shows announcing pronouns, which is often used to signal gender identity, improves how pronouns are understood.
A growing number of people use 他们/them pronouns to signal their gender identity, 但对很多人来说, use of “他们” to refer to a single individual takes some getting used to.
Results of a recent University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study showed the social trend of announcing preferred pronouns, which is often seen in email signatures, 推特bios和缩放设置, improves how pronouns are understood.
“Announcing one’s pronouns matters, and explicitly saying that someone uses 他们/them pronouns increases the chance that others will successfully interpret the pronoun in this way in the future,” 詹妮弗·阿诺德, a UNC-Chapel Hill professor of psychology and neuroscience who led the study published in 心理计量学公告 & 审查.
There is a psychology of language and Arnold studies the mental steps that underlie the way we process language.
Singular “他们” has been around for centuries. But its frequency and range of uses are expanding to those who identify as non-binary, 这是, those who do not exclusively identify as male or female. Using the pronouns that a person goes by is considered a sign of respect.
Still, sometimes people can use the wrong pronoun without realizing it or meaning any harm.
在最近的研究中, Arnold worked with undergraduate students Heather Mayo and Lisa Dong to test the impact of explicitly discussing pronouns. For example, saying “Alex uses 他们/them pronouns.”
在实验, 184 participants from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia read short stories such as “Alex went running with Liz. 他们倒下了.回答“谁摔倒了？?” indicated whether the participants interpreted 他们 比如Alex或者Alex和Liz.
Singular responses were found more often when Alex was either the only person in the story or when Alex was mentioned first. 当亚历克斯被列为第二名时, the rate of assigning singular interpretations was very low, 大约20%的时间会发生. It was especially hard to get without instruction about preferred pronouns.
The singular interpretation was stronger — in some experiments doubling the chance of getting pronouns right — when participants heard explicit instructions that Alex uses 他们/them pronouns. 然而, participants in all experiments had the opportunity to learn this through observation and illustrations.
“We found that people adopted the singular interpretation more often when 他们 had been explicitly told a person uses 他们/them pronouns in comparison with people who just figured it out from the context of a conversation,阿诺德说.
The National Science Foundation and the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience in the UNC-Chapel Hill Colleges of 艺术 & Sciences provided funding for the study.
