A corpus-based study of epicene pronouns used by Macedonian learners of English

Abstract

This article presents the findings of a study of the epicene pronouns used by Macedonian learners of English to refer anaphorically to compound indefinite pronouns and common-gender nouns as antecedents in their essays written in English. This study is based on the Macedonian component of the International Corpus of Learner English and aims to discover the distribution of epicene pronouns (he, he or she, and singular they), and the relationship between the choice of an epicene pronoun and particular antecedent (sub)types. The association between the use of specific epicene pronouns and the students’ gender, as well as their year of study at the university, was also investigated. The results point to a more widespread application of singular they compared to he or she and he. The findings also reveal an association between specific epicene pronouns and the degree of individuation of the antecedent. There was virtually no statistically significant difference in the students’ use of each pronoun across the academic years. It also appeared that there was no statistically significant difference between male and female participants regarding their use of epicene pronouns. Finally, the limitations of this study are discussed and directions are offered for future research.

Keywords

• epicene pronouns
• singular they
• generic he
• anaphoric reference
• learner english
• corpus-based studies
• gender-neutral language