The politics of pronouns

Abstract

In this article, I suggest that in reacting against the prescriptivism of various language purists, applied linguistics has often opted for a rather bland descriptivism, which tends to assume the existence of an unproblematic world that is neatly referenced by words in a language. Here, I discuss pronouns and argue that they are in fact very complex and political words, always raising difficult issues of who is being represented. There is, therefore, never an unproblematic ‘we’ or ‘you’ or ‘they’ or ‘I’ or ‘he/she’.

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