13 November 2019

Connecting our worlds to our words: influence of gender nonconformity on pronoun comprehension

Lauren Ackerman

How we understand and interact with our surroundings does not necessarily rely on the linguistic system. However, how we refer to our surroundings (using language) relies on our perceptual and cognitive systems. We acquire these categories through linguistic classification and cultural norms. Pronouns and gender are an interesting case of categorisation, as the standard two-category system of classification exists in languages with different pronominal systems. Furthermore, as nonbinary genders (e.g., genders of people who are neither men nor women) become more visible, English in particular is developing new suites of pronouns. How can we learn these novel pronouns? In this talk, I will discuss a system for understanding how human gender is encoded in language through grammatical gender features and non-linguistic gender biases or expectations with a focus on English and nonbinary gender.