Lital showed this tactic in hir interview with Bershtling, in which ze switched between the masculine and feminine markers in zis answers. But mostly, Lital says, “I am just there, I am just me.” Given that Lital’s gender identity goes beyond the binary parameters of hir maternal language, Lital uses a tactic called “codeswitching” in hir everyday life, a linguistic tactic that rejects the dichotomized identities of male and female, while still retaining the linguistic constructs, by wandering between the two genders. Sometimes, Lital is a boy, sometimes Lital is a drag queen. Born a female, Lital no longer identifies strictly with the gender ze was assigned at birth - nor does ze identify any specific gender at all times, for that matter. One of the people Bershtling interviews is Lital, a 21-year-old Israeli. Using a study that followed the gra dual success of implementing a gender-neutral pronoun in Swedish, I will reject a subversive-unconventional linguistic appr oach and argue for the employment of a subversive-neological linguistic approach that involves instituting a gender-neutral pronoun in the English language.įor her article “Speech Creates a Kind of Commitment,” Orit Bershtling interviewed six Israelis who identify as transgender or genderqueer to learn about their day-to-day experiences speaking Hebrew, a language with masculine and feminine grammatical gender.

Coupled with increasing numbers of institutions of higher education incorporating gender-neutral pronouns amidst controversy about their usage, this question is particularly relevant in American society. Does Simone de Beauvoir’s phenomenological analysis of recognition applied to the experience of transgender and genderqueer persons who challenge the limits of binary language offer sufficient rationale to implement a gender-neutral pronoun in English? With as many as 41 percent of all transgender persons attempting suicide at least once in their lives - far exceeding average of suicide rate of 4.6 percent across the United States - there is a salient need to address transgender issues and help ci sgender persons understand the complexity of life beyond binarity.

Pronoun Envy by Anna Livia