For anyone interested in epicene pronouns, Laura Louise Paterson's British pronoun use, prescription, and processing is an invaluable resource. Presenting evidence from a range of disciplines—including psycholinguistics, historical linguistics, formal syntax, and gender and women's studies—Paterson provides an in-depth and up-to-date corpus-based analysis of generic he and singular they in contemporary British English.
The book opens with an overview of the historical context for the epicene pronouns debate. In chapter 1, Paterson comprehensively lays the groundwork for the corpus-based research project that comprises the rest of the book. She challenges the notion that third person pronouns, as part of a closed-class system, are impervious to change, and in any event carry little or no semantic value. She presents a summary of the changes to the pronoun system from Old English (c.500–1100 CE) through to the contemporary system, and she reports on a number of psycholinguistic projects that demonstrate the default [+ masculine] value of the supposedly generic he. Singular they does not seem to carry the same processing load as generic he, making it a strong candidate as the epicene pronoun of choice in modern British English.
Paterson's research project begins in earnest in chapter 2, starting with a discussion of corpus linguistics as an analytical framework. The strengths of a corpus-based approach are discussed, as are its shortcomings, and the data for the project (a subset of the BE06 corpus held at Lancaster University) are presented. Paterson accounts for the distribution of both singular they and generic he across written genres, and shows that while singular they seems to be preferred as the epicene pronoun, this is strongly conditioned by the type of antecedent. In particular, singular they has a wider distribution (p. 60), while generic he is more syntactically restricted.
To situate these findings in a broader context, chapter 3 discusses the role of social movements in the epicene debate. Paterson provides a grounded overview of the prescriptive grammarian's position in favour of generic he, and contrasts this with feminist language reform projects and the effects of sexual politics more generally. Education as a locus for language change is explored briefly, and leads elegantly into chapter 4's examination of epicene pronoun prescription in current (post-2000) British English reference grammars. Although the majority of contemporary grammars acknowledge the problematic nature of generic he, most of these endorse avoidance strategies (e.g. rephrasing the sentence to avoid pronouns altogether) rather than using singular they.
Finally, chapter 5 puts forward an adaptation of Whitley's (1978) Homonymy Theory as an account for the singular use of they: singular they is not merely a manipulation of the plural, but a single pronoun in its own right, homonymous with the plural. Paterson acknowledges that the theory is as yet under tested, but presents her research as broadly supportive of it, and as ‘a push-off point for further work’ (p. 167).
Although at times the data are small in number, Paterson's analysis is always grounded in both context and linguistic theory, making this a thoroughly researched report on epicene pronouns in British English.
