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A much-debated issue in English is the use of “epicene pronouns”, i.e. third-person singular pronouns of indeterminate gender. Previous studies have shown that singular they is the most common epicene in L1 English, but this pronoun has not received much attention in studies of L2 use. The present study extends previous research by examining variation between L2 groups in the distribution of epicene pronouns, focussing particularly on the use of singular they and how it is affected by three features of the antecedent: definiteness, notional number, and gender expectancy. The data originate in an elicitation experiment, which was completed by 338 university students of English from eight L1 backgrounds. The results show that singular they was most frequently used with notionally plural antecedents, whereas it was least common with gender-stereotyped antecedents. The study also disclosed variation between learners: In some L1 groups, they was used frequently with all types of antecedents, suggesting that these learners perceive singular they as a singular pronoun in its own right. In other groups, singular they appeared to function mostly as a modification of the plural they, as the pronoun was only frequent with notionally plural antecedents. The findings have important implications for language teaching.

Tämä tutkielma tarkastelee nykyajan amerikanenglannin they-pronominin yksiköllistä käyttöä anaforisissa viittauksissa. Englantia kuvataan yleensä kieleksi, jossa ei ole sukupuolineutraalia kolmannen persoonan yksikköpronominia. Kielenhuollossa tähän tehtävään on vanhastaan suositeltu maskuliinisen he-pronominin käyttöä, ja 1900-luvun loppupuoliskolla myös he or she -tyyppisten rakenteiden käyttö yleistyi. Pääasiallisesti monikollisen they-pronominin käytöllä yksiköllisesti on kuitenkin selkeästi todennettavissa oleva historia. Nykypäivän seksismiin ja inkluusioon liittyvät diskurssit ovat johtaneet ehdotuksiin yksiköllisen they-pronominin omaksumisesta standardikieleen, ja kyseinen piirre onkin ollut huomattavan metalingvistisen huomion kohteena. Tässä tutkimuksessa pyritään korpuslingvistiikan keinoin selvittämään yksiköllisen they-sanan käytön kehitystä lähimenneisyydessä. Tutkimuksessa toteutetaan lyhyen aikavälin diakroninen vertailu, jossa verrattavina aikapisteinä toimivat vuodet 2009 ja 2019. Tutkimuksen aineisto on peräisin suuresta amerikanenglannin seurantakorpuksesta, nimeltään Corpus of Contemporary American English. Yksiköllisen they:n esiintymiä etsittiin korpuksesta hakulausekkeilla, joihin sisällytettiin kahdeksan piirteelle potentiaalista korrelaattia; näistä neljä oli indefiniittipronomineja (anyone, anybody, someone, somebody) ja neljä sukupuolineutraaleja substantiiveja (person, individual, patient, student). Hakutuloksista eroteltiin manuaalisesti relevantit yksiköllisen they-sanan esiintymät epärelevanteista osumista. Tämän jälkeen tuloksia analysoitiin korrelaatti kerrallaan: analyysin kohteena olivat yksiköllisten they-esiintymien määrä, niiden taivutuksellinen jakauma ja niitä ympäröivä välitön sekä laajempi käyttökonteksti. Vuosien 2009 ja 2019 tuloksia verrattiin keskenään yksiköllisen they:n käytössä tapahtuneiden mahdollisten muutosten todentamiseksi. Tutkimuksen tulokset viittaavat, että yksiköllisen they-sanan käyttö on kasvamaan päin, sillä vuoden 2019 aineistosta löytyi piirteelle vuoteen 2009 verratessa lähes 300 esiintymää enemmän. Käytetyistä edeltävistä sanoista yksiköllisen they:n havaittiin korreloivan erityisesti indefiniittipronominien ja substantiivin person kanssa. Yksiköllisen they-pronominin yleistyminen keskittyi erityisesti muodollisempiin rekistereihin, kuten sanomalehtiteksteihin ja akateemisiin julkaisuihin. Tällainen kehitys vihjaisi, että yksiköllisestä they-pronominista on tulossa aiempaa laajemmin hyväksytty piirre amerikanenglannissa. On kuitenkin huomattava, että sen käyttö vaikuttaa silti selkeästi yleisimmältä epämuodollisissa konteksteissa ja puhutussa kielessä, mikä antaa ymmärtää, ettei piirrettä ole ainakaan täysin omaksuttu yleiskieliseksi.

Singular they has emerged as a key term in contemporary gender politics, reflecting growing usage of they/them as nonbinary personal pronouns. Drawing on interviews with 54 progressive gender activists, we consider how singular they can be used to resist and redo aspects of the prevailing gender structure. We identify three distinct usages of singular they: (1) as a nonbinary personal pronoun, (2) as a universal gender-neutral pronoun, and (3) as an indefinite pronoun when a person’s self-identified gender is unknown. While previous research on singular they as a gender-inclusive language practice has focused primarily on its usage as a nonbinary personal pronoun, our findings point to the relevance for gender politics of all three usages. Our analysis offers new insight into how nonbinary they challenges dominant gender norms and practices beyond incorporating additional gender categories. Given our findings, we propose further investigation of how using gender-neutral pronouns for everyone in specific contexts can advance progressive activists’ goals. Finally, we argue that the longstanding usage of singular they as an indefinite pronoun has new importance today in affirming gender as a self-determined identity.

This paper analyzes the concepts of gender in a social and grammatical context, comparing their relation and how the social is mirrored (and reproduced) through language. Emphasis is on how markers of gender as a social construct are removed, replaced with a more neutral element, or even with a novel element with the aim of rendering the extralinguistic gender of referents less important or unintelligible. With this aim in mind, two surveys were done to ascertain how native Croatian speakers and anglophones achieve that aim in the languages they speak, especially focusing on the treatment of nonbinary people as well as strategies they themselves employ. The results of both surveys are compared with each other, and the overall results discussed in relation to some proposed solutions for creating a more gender-neutral language. Conclusions are drawn on the popularity and willingness to use certain gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language patterns.

This project aims to characterize the formal and cognitive properties of linguistically encoded gender in English. This will be accomplished through the investigation of how gender is linguistically and cognitively processed during coreference resolution, and whether the associated processing behaviors vary across communities with different social exposure to gender (non-)conformity. In particular, this project focuses on how singular (specific) they is learned and processed by people within, adjacent to, and outside of transgender and non-binary communities.

With universities and other academic institutions now creating policies regarding the use of pronouns and the rights of individuals to use the pronouns they prefer, use of the singular they pronoun...

Writers of scientific articles are familiar with the advice to avoid using the passive voice. Prescriptivists argue that the passive leads to bloated, indirect, and even evasive writing, and they recommend that the active form be used instead. This article defends the passive voice against these charges and argues that this advice is misguided. The article begins with a summary of the passive construction and the diversity of its forms, many of which are not appreciated in discussions of the passive voice's purported flaws, and is then followed by a summary of why some prescriptivists criticize its use. Three motivations for the use of the passive voice based on findings from psycholinguistic research are then described: First, the passive form allows writers to maintain topic continuity and conform to the given-new principle of communication; 2nd, speakers use the passive voice to accommodate concepts that are accessible; and 3rd, passive sentences are not communicatively equivalent to actives, and therefore active sentence paraphrases will sometimes distort the writer's message. An additional problem with the advice to avoid passive sentences is that people have trouble correctly identifying them and tend to rely on superficial cues that often diagnose other irrelevant grammatical constructions. Just as rules against split infinitives, stranded prepositions, and the singular they have been abandoned, so too should the prohibition against the passive voice. Instead of shunning a perfectly grammatical and useful construction, writers should strive to generate prose that is clear and elegant, using all the linguistic tools at their disposal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The second half or the twentieth century witnessed the emergence and expansion of linguistic changes associated to a number of processes related to changes in socio-cultural norms, such as colloquialization, informalization and democratization. This paper focuses on the latter, a phenomenon that has been claimed to be responsible for several ongoing changes in inner-circle varieties of English, but is rather unexplored in outer-circle varieties. The paper explores Hong Kong English and studies two linguistic sets of markers that include items that represent the (old) undemocratic alternative and the (new) democratic option, namely modal must vs. semi-modals have (got) to, need (to) and want to, and epicene pronouns including undemocratic generic he, on the one hand, and democratic singular they and conjoined he or she, on the other. Using the Hong Kong component of the International Corpus of English, and adopting a register approach, the paper reaches conclusions regarding the role played by prescriptivism in the diffusion of democratic items.

The paper compares the usage of singular they with two morphologically similar constructions in British and American English. The constructions in question are lose one’s life and lose one’s job. The results obtained suggest that singular they, at least used with the two constructions in focus of this work, seems to be more widely used in the American variety of English than in the British variety. An additional aim of this work is to present and discuss some practical aspects of working with mega-corpora. The work shows how and where quantitative language studies need to be accompanied by manual and qualitative investigations. The corpora used in this work are the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).

Research articles in English are read and composed by individuals from many lingua-cultural backgrounds; this diversity in the users of English as an academic lingua franca is likely to increase further with the rise of open access (OA) publishing. In the light of this, a pertinent question is how gender is constructed in international research articles. This study examines OA articles (N = 1003) with respect to the use of epicene pronouns, third-person singular pronouns of indeterminate gender. The analysis of pronominal reference shows that the non-gendered singular they was the most common pronoun overall, closely followed by gendered he or she forms. The use of generic he also occurred with some frequency. Further, the study investigates what kinds of author guidelines OA journals have for the use of gender-fair language. The analysis reveals that specific guidelines were generally uncommon, and that there was no immediate correspondence between policy and practice in cases where journals provided guidelines. Taken together, the findings disclose a state of flux in the use of epicene pronouns in OA articles. A key issue in international publishing and journal editing is thus to raise awareness about gendered language through guidelines and submission checklists.

Gender specificity in legislation started being questioned in the late 20th century, and the need to reform the way in which laws have been written for more than onehundred years has been particularly evident in English-language jurisdictions. In the 1990s and 2000s, the adoption of a plain English style forced legislative drafters to avoid sentences of undue length, superfluous definitions, repeated words and gender specificity with the aim of achieving clarity and minimizing ambiguity. Experts in the legal field have suggested reorganizing sentences, avoiding male pronouns, repeating the noun in place of the pronoun, replacing a nominalization with a verb form, resorting to ‘the singular they’. This article gives a linguistic insight into the use of ‘singular they’ in English, beginning with a historical back‐ ground and going on to assess the impact of its use in the primary legislation issued in a selection of English-language jurisdictions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, the US) in the last decade (2008-2018). Given the environment of legislative drafting techniques, where considerable reliance on precedent is inevita‐ ble, proposals to change legislative language may produce interesting results in dif‐ ferent jurisdictions.

This study contributes to the emerging literature on gender identity and pronoun use by exploring strategies to refer to unknown human referents. In an online survey involving mainly a university population aged 29 and below, participants were first asked to pick a potential roommate from two fictional characters with gender-ambiguous names and write short answers explaining their choice. Secondly, participants were explicitly asked what pronoun they would use to refer to an unknown human referent from a list of neopronouns in addition to singular they. The results show a strong association between participants’ self-identified gender and the gendered pronoun used. The results also show singular they is the most popular gender-inclusive pronoun for an unknown individual while pronoun avoidance strategies include repeating names and using generic nouns. Additionally, the reflexive form themself is preferred over themselves for unknown human referents, in contrast to previous research showing almost the same rate of naturalness for themselves and themself in the specific-reference context.

Socialinės lyties kalbinės raiškos ir įvaizdžio kūrimo aspektai anglų kalbos (kaip svetimosios ar antrosios) vadovėliuose yra sulaukę nemažai tyrėjų dėmesio, tačiau lyties raiška Lietuvoje leistuose anglų kalbos vadovėliuose iki šiol analizuota sporadiškai (Brusokaitė, Verikaitė-Gaigalienė 2015), o tyrimų, skirtų ne vadovėliams, bet kitoms mokymo priemonėms, iki šiol beveik neatlikta. Šiame straipsnyje kiekybiniu (pasitelkiant tekstynų analizės įrankius) ir kokybiniu (remiantis turinio analize) būdu analizuojamos socialinės lyties vaizdavimo tendencijos keturiose – dviejose pratybų ir dviejose testų – anglų kalbos (kaip svetimosios) mokymo priemonėse, išleistose 2005–2017 m. Lietuvoje. Remiantis ankstesnių tyrėjų įdirbiu, straipsnyje nagrinėjamos tiek lytį nurodančios kalbinės raiškos priemonės (pvz., įvardžių, kreipimosi formų, šeimos ir lyties vaidmenis įvardijančių daiktavardžių vartosena), tiek vartosenos kontekstas, t. y. lyčių formavimo stereotipai. Atlikto tyrimo rezultatai patvirtina ankstesnių tyrėjų (plg. Hellinger 1980; Porreca 1984; Ansary, Babaji 2003; Pihlaja 2007; Lee 2016) rastas lyties įvaizdžio kūrimo vadovėliuose tendencijas: analizuotose mokymo priemonėse dominuoja vyrišką lytį atspindinčios kalbinės raiškos priemonės, o moterys dažniau nei vyrai yra pateikiamos stereotipizuotuose kontekstuose. Vyrai neretai pristatomi kaip lyderiai, šeimos maitintojai, o moterys siejamos su namų ir šeimos sritimi, jos dažniau vaizduojamos kaip bailios, silpnos ir pagalbos stokojančios būtybės. Tokia vartosena, viena vertus, rodo, jog analizuotų mokymo priemonių autoriai (sąmoningai ar nesąmoningai) palaiko ir rizikuoja mokiniams įskiepyti patriarchalines lyties įvaizdžių kategorijas, kurios neatspindi modernioje visuomenėje kintančių kultūrinių lyčių santykių modelių (Britton, Lumpkin 1977; Peterson, Lach 1990). Kita vertus, nei šiuose tekstuose pasirinktos lyties įvaizdžio kūrimo strategijos, nei kalbinių lyties įvaizdžio raiškos priemonių vartosena neatspindi šiandienės anglų kalbos vartosenos tendencijų, kurios pirmenybę vis dažniau teikia lyčiai neutralioms kalbinės raiškos priemonėms (plg. Pauwels 2001; Romaine 2001; Baker 2010). Mokymo priemonių rengėjams ateityje reikėtų daugiau dėmesio skirti kalbinei lyties raiškai: vengti stereotipinių lyčių įvaizdžių ir šališkumo lyties atžvilgiu, atsižvelgti į kintančius lyčių santykius šiandienėse britų ir amerikiečių visuomenėse ir juos atitinkamai atspindėti mokymo medžiagoje. Tai padėtų praplėsti socialinės lyties sampratos ribas ir ugdyti kitokį (nebūtinai heteronorminį) mokinių požiūrį į lytį. Gender representation in textbooks used for teaching English as a foreign or second language (EFL/ESL) has been analysed extensively and in various countries since the 1970s. According to most studies (e.g. Hellinger 1980; Porreca 1984; Ansary and Babaji 2003; Pihlaja 2007; Lee 2016), females tend to be underrepresented and depicted in stereotypical ways, which risks reinforcing gender clichés in students (Britton and Lumpkin 1977; Peterson and Lach 1990). To date, only a few studies (Brusokaitė and Verikaitė-Gaigalienė 2015) have focused on gender representation in teaching materials used in Lithuania; moreover, teaching materials other than textbooks remain underexplored. Using corpus analysis tools and criteria adapted from previous analyses of gender representation and language use in textbooks, this study takes a both quantitative and qualitative approach to the analysis of two EFL exercise books and two EFL test books published in Lithuania between 2005 and 2017 and currently available on the Lithuanian book market. The results show that males are more visible numerically; meanwhile, females are more likely to be represented in stereotypical ways. This article argues that neither gender representation nor language use in the books reflect developments in terms of gender equality in English-speaking societies (Pauwels 2001; Romaine 2001; Baker 2010).

With the increasing demand for gender-fair language, an important issue to take into consideration in academic writing is the use of so-called epicene pronouns, i.e. singular personal pronouns unspecified for gender. Yet, little research has focused on how L2 English academic writers use these pronouns. The present study examines the use of epicene pronouns since the 1970s in L2 academic writing and analyses their current use, starting from 2010. The data originate from two corpora with academic papers written by Swedish-speaking university students of English: (1) the Finland-Swedish BATMAT corpus, which is used to extract diachronic data, and (2) the Swedish subset of the Varieties of English for Specific Purposes dAtabase, VESPA-SE, which adds to the data of current use. The results show that although the use of generic he has decreased noticeably since the 1970s, there is considerable variation in and between the texts from the 2010s. Such variation is indicative of a language change that is still very much in progress. The findings also suggest that singular they is establishing itself as a third-person singular pronoun in L2 academic writing since this pronoun is used frequently with all types of epicene antecedents in the data of current use.

Recent trends in German education, most notably resulting from the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and unprecedented refugee movements, have contributed to renewed interest in teacher education to address issues of equity and access. However, narrowly circumscribed notions of inclusivity continue to marginalise the potentially transformative nature of critical foreign language pedagogy and its ability to address these issues. To address this gap, a module to examine issues regarding non-heteronormativity in English as a foreign language (EFL) was developed as part of an undergraduate seminar to prepare pre-service teachers (PSTs) to teach in inclusive settings. In this chapter, the module and its implementation are described.

There is a growing experimental and theoretical literature on singular they, much of it focusing on the nature of the antecedents it takes (Foertsch & Gernsbacher 1997; Bjorkman 2017; Doherty & Conklin 2017; Prasad 2017; Ackerman et al. 2018; Ackerman 2018a; Ackerman 2018b; Conrod 2018; Ackerman 2019; Camilliere et al. 2019; Conrod 2019; Konnelly & Cowper 2020). We conducted two experiments which, in contrast to earlier studies, manipulated whether the gender of the referent of singular they is known to the discourse participants and whether there is a linguistic antecedent for singular they. We found that the presence of an antecedent ameliorates the acceptability of singular they—even in a context where the gender of the referent may be known to the hearer. We interpret this novel finding as revealing how a linguistic antecedent can signal the irrelevance of gender in a discourse and thereby licenses singular they. We also find a trend, inversely correlated with age, toward higher acceptability of even deictic singular they in gender known contexts, partially bearing out findings in Bjorkman (2017), Conrod (2019), and Konnelly & Cowper (2020) about innovative users of singular they.

As one of the primary means of constructing gendered identities, language is a matter of central concern to transgender people (Zimman 2018). In this paper, we present an analysis of non-binary singular they; that is, they as used to refer to individuals whose gender identity is not, or is not exclusively, masculine or feminine. Despite singular they’s widespread usage and long history in English, not all speakers judge this most recent innovation to be grammatical, even if they do not object to singular they in quantified, generic, or otherwise gender non-specific contexts, and even if they produce the latter sort of examples natively. We argue that resistance to this new use of they can, at least in part, be attributed to speakers’ level of participation in a grammatical change in progress. Further, we propose that this change can be categorized into three distinct stages, with they’s most recent broadening – that is, as a non-binary singular pronoun of reference – dovetailing with wider socio-cultural changes (as well as featural changes beyond the pronominal system) that underscore the difficulty in separating grammatical and social judgements. As we aim to show, linguists from all subdisciplines – both theoretical and applied – are especially well suited to leverage theoretical insights to advocate for trans-affirming language practice.

As one of the primary means of constructing gendered identities, language is a matter of central concern to transgender people (Zimman 2018). In this paper, we present an analysis of non-binary singular 'they'; that is, 'they' as used to refer to individuals whose gender identity is not, or is not exclusively, masculine or feminine. Despite singular 'they'’s widespread usage and long history in English, not all speakers judge this most recent innovation to be grammatical, even if they do not object to singular 'they' in quantified, generic, or otherwise gender non-specific contexts, and even if they produce the latter sort of examples natively. We argue that resistance to this new use of 'they' can, at least in part, be attributed to speakers’ level of participation in a grammatical change in progress. Further, we propose that this change can be categorized into three distinct stages, with 'they'’s most recent broadening – that is, as a non-binary singular pronoun of reference – dovetailing with wider socio-cultural changes (as well as featural changes beyond the pronominal system) that underscore the difficulty in separating grammatical and social judgements. As we aim to show, linguists from all subdisciplines – both theoretical and applied – are especially well suited to leverage theoretical insights to advocate for trans-affirming language practice.

There has been increased awareness that individuals need not have a binary gender identity (i.e., male or female), but rather, gender identities exist on a spectrum. With this increased awareness, there has also been an increase in the use of they as a singular pronoun when referring to individuals with a non-binary gender identity. Has the processing of singular they changed along with a change in its usage? Previous studies have demonstrated that sentences in which they is co-indexed with singular antecedents, are judged acceptable and are easy to process, but only if the antecedents are non-referential and/or have ambiguous gender; co-indexing they with referential antecedents with unambiguous gender (e.g., Mary) results in lower acceptability ratings and greater processing effort. We investigated whether participants who frequently interacted with individuals with a non-binary gender identity and/or identified as having a non-binary gender themselves would process sentences in which themselves was co-indexed with singular antecedents similarly. We found a significant P600 effect for sentences in which themselves was co-indexed with singular referential antecedents with unambiguous gender, but failed to find a P600 effect when the antecedents were non-referential and/or had an ambiguous gender. This pattern of results is consistent with behavioural results from previous studies, suggesting that the change in the usage of singular they has not resulted in a corresponding change in the way in which this pronoun is processed.

[Abstract] Over the past few years, there has been an increasing tendency to make language more inclusive, which consists of avoiding the use of the masculine gender as a generic form to refer both to men and women. This paper presents a descriptive and analytical approach to the use of singular they as a valid alternative for an epicene pronoun in English, since the traditional one, generic he, has been recently considered sexist, contributing to the exclusion of women both in society and in the discourse. At the same time, the other possible substitute, the coordinated form he or she, has been rejected by many grammarians and various scholars for making the text unwieldy and cumbersome. For this purpose, this paper offers first a theoretical framework for the justification of the different uses of singular they, taking into account the opinion of various academics like Paterson (2014 and 2011) and Bjorkman (2017), among others, and giving an account of the history of the pronoun they, as well as some of the problems that its singular use causes. Secondly, a complete analysis of a good number of reference grammars and textbooks for students of English as a Foreign Language is carried out in order to reflect upon the presence of this epicene pronoun in different levels of education. Moreover, this paper reports the results of a corpus-based study on the use of singular they in the press. A careful selection of articles from The Guardian and Los Angeles Times was thoroughly analysed in order to obtain convincing evidence of the frequency of usage of this feature in opposition to generic he and he or she. The different contexts, antecedents and linguistic environments triggering their use were carefully studied. The data reveal that singular they is the preferred option for a gender-inclusive pronoun, outperforming generic he and he or she, especially in the course of the 21st century. Thus, the results of this analysis and the generalised use of singular they in recent newspapers offer powerful evidence of the adequacy of this pronoun as an epicene form. In this connection, this end-of-degree project may have a certain relevance in the current social and linguistic context, as feminist movements have been condemning the use of the masculine as a generic, this being considered non-inclusive. All in all, the present study contributes to show the validity and pertinence of singular they nowadays, as well as how social movements can provoke a change in the language. Furthermore, this project could certainly instigate the interest in conducting further research on the topic. Traballo fin de grao (UDC.FIL). Inglés: estudios lingüísticos y literarios. Curso 2019/2020

This article explores the online processing of singular he and she and singular they by learners of English to discover whether singular they presents a processing problem for non-native speakers (NNSs). It also examines the extent to which such issues may vary as a function of L2 proficiency at B2, C1, and C2 levels. A self-paced reading study was conducted with 51 students at an Austrian university. Results were compared with a similar study based on data collected from native speakers. We found advanced NNSs matching those of native speakers in almost all respects, and we present some evidence for developmental progression in how he, she, and they are processed. Pronoun-specific details are built up over time, and we suggest their relative strength depends on the robustness of the input. We provide self-reported production data to support this argument. This study paints a very optimistic picture of the acquisition of singular they at B2 and higher proficiency levels, as it can be acquired even under circumstances of later familiarization.

Accommodating non-binary transgender people, many of whom use gender-neutral pronouns, poses a unique challenge to schools and universities, even in contexts with legal protections for transgender ...

In recent years, it is found that pronoun they and its lemmas are used to refer to singular person to show that the person does not wish to be identified as one of gender binaries. This phenomenon occurs in The Washington Post having added singular they to their stylebook. Therefore this paper aims at elaborating how pronouns they, them, their, theirs, and themselves are used as singular ones in the articles of The Washington Post published in 2016. With the aid of corpus instrument software, this study qualitatively analyses a small corpus consisting of 100 articles. References of pronouns identified as singular are proceeded as the data source of this study and categorized into Crystal’s (2003) main classes of noun and Cobuild’s (2011) classification of indefinite pronoun. The study reveals that The Washington Post used they as singular with the references of proper noun which consists of names of people and organizations, common count concrete noun which consists of nouns denoting persons and a noun denoting things, common count abstract noun consisting of nouns denoting abstract entities, and 6 indefinite pronouns which are used to refer to persons. These references are found mostly to be non-referential, where gender is indefinite. However, some are found to be referential which are common count concrete noun child and proper nouns in the form of names of people. These references refer to individuals who identify themselves not in one of gender binaries, instead they are found to be used in a context regarding LGBT.