In What's your pronoun? Dennis Baron returns to one of the topics covered in his influential book Grammar and gender (Reference Baron1986). This new text, aimed at a broad audience, taps into the increasing mainstream interest in the relationship between third-person pronoun use and gender identity. It also includes an extensive chronology of proposals for novel gender-neutral pronouns. The book documents two key debates—the choice of a (formally endorsed) third-person singular gender-neutral English pronoun for unknown/generic referents, and the use of English pronouns for people whose identity is not represented by he or she. While these two issues are related, Baron does not always hold them separate and shows a tendency to conflate gender neutrality with gender equality.

Baron opens with the claim that ‘Pronouns are suddenly sexy’ (1). Of course, for those of us who have spent time researching pronoun use, said ‘sexiness’ is already apparent, but the opening statement is a clear indication of Baron's intended audience. On issues of gender equality, Baron claims, ‘If you don't already have a pronoun, this book will help you find one’ (3) and ‘Since all words are invented words, if you don't see a pronoun here that meets your needs, by all means, make one up’ (13). These statements oversimplify the issues under consideration and contradict the book's central tenet that newly coined pronouns rarely, if ever, become part of an established paradigm. In terms of gender neutrality, Baron foregrounds the well-established use of singular they. However, the book would have benefited from reference to academic studies that have shown the prevalence of singular they across different varieties of English at different points in time. Indeed, most post 2000 citations in the book are anecdotes taken from media texts and position pieces, which, while useful as illustrative examples, do not comprise data that is systematically collected and analysed. Furthermore, the book is very much focused on the US and the UK at the expense of considering pronoun use elsewhere and in languages other than English.

Chapter 1, ‘The missing word’, opens with an example of a transgender teacher taking the pronoun they. This case study is returned to throughout the book and is used to demonstrate Baron's takeaway message that pronouns are a site of social and political debate. Chapter 2, ‘The politics of he’, focuses on generic he and the legal interpretation of pronouns, with specific reference made to clauses or caveats in legal texts that demand all masculine terms should be read as including women. Baron problematises this idea through reference to campaigns for women's suffrage. He foregrounds the argument that, if women could not vote because the he in legal documents excluded them, then they should not be punishable for any crime where the written law referred only to he. Baron concludes that, in opposing such arguments, ‘Men in power accepted the generic masculine only when it didn't require them to give up too much’ (58). The chapter is thus a case study in historical attitudes towards generic he, although Baron does not give enough consideration to language reforms and second-wave feminism. Most examples in the chapter are pre 1945, with only brief mentions of the 1960s/70s in the concluding paragraph (78). In treating generic he as a historical issue, Baron misses an opportunity to discuss contemporary attitudes to this pronoun in different varieties of English and/or in L2 contexts.

The third chapter, ‘The words that failed’, covers similar ground to Baron's Reference Baron1981 article of the same name, although given increasing mainstream interest in pronouns in the past few years, he is justified in repackaging his earlier work for a different audience. However, in trying to present debates about pronoun use to a broad audience, Baron tends towards oversimplification. For example, he claims that ‘people use the pronouns they like, not the ones they're told to use’ (82). This is not entirely accurate. While the English personal pronouns are rote learned during acquisition due to their retaining case markers not found elsewhere, and thus we use the pronouns we receive as L1 input, the real issue is not that people ‘like’ certain pronouns more than others, but rather that, due to their closed-class nature, pronouns are difficult to change once they have been acquired. Indeed, the closed-class status of pronouns and a lack of exposure to novel pronouns during acquisition explains why novel pronouns like thon, xe, hiser, and so on are not widely used.

To discuss the ‘failure’ of novel pronouns, Baron takes thon as a case study, noting that it had some success in 1884 when it was listed in dictionaries. He also considers heer and hiser and highlights how they were rejected on social/political grounds. Baron never considers the linguistic reasons novel pronouns did not catch on, and his focus on the politics of pronouns only tells part of the story. However, he somewhat excuses this by claiming that ‘gender-neutral pronouns continued to be more associated with feminism than with grammatical reform’ (105). He emphasises the claim that men in the mid-nineteenth century ‘blame[d] women for the pronoun problem’ (86), with more blaming of women and feminism at the turn of the twentieth century. Baron also suggests that arguments against nonbinary pronouns in the twenty-first century echo those posed against novel pronouns in the twentieth, especially in terms of ideas about political correctness (although the term itself was not used).

Having established the foundations of historical debates about pronouns, Baron diverges from his earlier works in chapter 4, ‘Queering the pronoun’. He positions ‘queering the pronoun’ as the ‘latest development in language and gender’ (115). While this chapter contains the greatest volume of new material, it is refreshing to see nonbinary pronouns contextualised historically rather than being presented as a twenty-first-century phenomenon. However, the first two examples Baron uses in this chapter (one of which is fictional, from Woolf's Orlando) involve people having transformative experiences that in some way change their gender. These examples are, at best, unfortunate and, at worst, offensive in their implicit endorsement of the erroneous idea that transgender and nonbinary identities are a reaction to some flashpoint event. Further, Baron notes that terminology around gender is in flux, but it is still disappointing to see ‘gender-bending’ (126) used. By contrast, Baron acknowledges opposition to the term ‘preferred pronoun’ as it suggests that gender is a choice rather than an ‘essence’ (136). Yet, despite references to queering pronouns, Baron does not draw on the wealth of academic literature that is already available on this topic. As established earlier, the book is aimed at the popular market, but this should not preclude the inclusion of academic findings in favour of media clippings and anecdotes.

Chapter 5, ‘The missing word is they’, considers singular they. Baron touches on the historical development of he and she and provides a potted history of singular they with examples from literature. These examples contradict his position (given in the introduction) that pronouns just appeared. For example, he claims that ‘At some point someone, identity unknown, made up he, she, and they’ (12). This attributes the pronoun paradigm to individual innovations, ignores established scholarship on its historical development, and implies that pronouns appeared in English fully formed, their origins lost to ‘the mists of time’ (12). While a detailed history of the (standard) English pronoun paradigm would have been out of place here, pitching its existence as a mystery is inaccurate.

Baron ultimately makes the point that usage, not prescriptions, drive language change. He explains that twenty-first-century style manuals still advise against the use of singular they despite an overwhelming body of evidence showing its use. Yet, it is a shame that this argument comes so close to the end of the book. Baron also mentions the American Dialect Society's choice of singular they as their word of the year in 2015, although he does not point out that this referred only to the nonbinary use of they, not its generic use for singular unknown referents. This is further evidence of Baron's conflation of gender neutrality and gender equality.

The book concludes with an impressive chronology of (novel) pronouns spanning from 1770 to 2018. It comprises a list of useful examples for teaching, including quotations and (where available) bibliographic information about the individuals who proposed each pronoun. The book ultimately provides an overview of public opinion about pronouns (in the US and the UK) and is a good source of anecdotes and examples. While not suitable as a course book, it may still be of general interest to undergraduate students.