ADRIAN QUINTERO is a transgender person with strong feelings about pronouns. 鈥淥ur language really needs words to acknowledge folks who do not feel included in the gender binary,鈥� says Quintero, who uses the pronouns 鈥渮e鈥� (or 鈥渮ie鈥�) and 鈥渉ir鈥�, because 鈥渢hey have the freedom to mean something other than, or in addition to, male and female鈥�.
Quintero鈥檚 mother, Elaine Stotko, shares this interest. A linguistics expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, she was fascinated when in 2004 a teacher in her Linguistics for Teachers class asked, 鈥淗ave you ever heard kids using 鈥榶o鈥� when they mean he or she?鈥�
About half the teachers taking the course had also heard 鈥測o鈥� used in this way, leading Stotko and Margaret Troyer (one of the teachers) to research this development, which they have now documented in the linguistics journal American Speech, ).
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They found that from at least 2004 to the present day, middle-school and high-school students in Baltimore have been using 鈥測o鈥� as a gender-neutral personal pronoun in sentences such as: 鈥淵o put his foot up鈥� and 鈥淵o looks like a freak鈥�.
鈥淭he lack of a gender-neutral personal pronoun in English has bothered people for at least two centuries鈥�
The lack of gender-neutral substitutes for 鈥渉e鈥�/鈥漵he鈥� and 鈥渉is鈥�/鈥漢er鈥� has bothered people for at least two centuries, and 鈥渮ie鈥� and 鈥渉ir鈥� are just two of many invented words, including 鈥渢er鈥�, 鈥渋p鈥� and 鈥渢hon鈥�. If such words are not familiar, it is because they 鈥� like all attempts to coin a gender-neutral personal pronoun 鈥� have failed miserably.
Dennis Baron, a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has written extensively about this history of failure, says the emergence of 鈥測o鈥� is remarkable because it seems to be a spontaneous grass-roots phenomenon. 鈥淢ost of the gender-neutral pronouns are artificial coinages that are then marketed 鈥� unsuccessfully 鈥� to users,鈥� he says.
To make their case, Stotko and Troyer had to distinguish this new use of 鈥測o鈥� from interjections, such as 鈥淵o, Adrian!鈥�, and abbreviations of 鈥測ou鈥� or 鈥測our鈥�, such as 鈥淵o mama鈥�. As well as listening for spontaneous uses of the word, they asked students to fill in cartoon captions, judge the authenticity of sentences, and make up conversations.
Both researchers agree that a sentence-translating exercise produced compelling results. 鈥淭hey translated yo as he/she pretty consistently,鈥� says Troyer. 鈥淭his showed me that students are not only using a new slang word because it鈥檚 cool; they are actually aware of the meaning of what they are saying.鈥�
Whether 鈥測o鈥� catches on more widely, even among people who support gender-neutral language, remains an open question. 鈥淚t sounds crass and disrespectful,鈥� says feminist scholar Brenda Wrigley. 鈥淚t is something a younger person would shout down the street as a greeting, but not something I鈥檇 like to see used in writing.鈥�
While the prospects of 鈥測o鈥� being accepted into the established family of pronouns appear slim, Baron doesn鈥檛 rule it out. 鈥淎ll it takes is a way to break out of the narrow range of use into the broader community of speakers, and while that鈥檚 not likely, it could happen.鈥�
