Emerging Pronoun Practices After the Procedural Turn: Disclosure, Discovery, and Repair

Abstract

We examine emerging practices of pronoun disclosure, discovery, and repair after the procedural turn in pronoun politics, which shifted attention from the substantive question of which pronouns should be used to the procedural question of how preferred pronouns, whatever they might be, could be effectively communicated to others. Drawing on interviews with and observations of college students and recent graduates who are committed in principle to using preferred pronouns, we consider how they seek to do so in practice, focusing on practices of disclosure, discovery, and repair. We underscore the gap between the knowledge that is required in principle to use preferred pronouns consistently and the imperfect knowledge that pronoun-users have in practice, and we show how the use of preferred pronouns creates new forms of interactional accountability.

Keywords

• gender
• language
• pronouns
• interaction
• accountability
• knowledge