This essay outlines the problems associated with the history and current absence of a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun in the English language. The combination of the social and grammatical consequences of this language gap results in pronoun choices that are either politically incorrect or verbose. Experts’ attempts to fill this language gap have failed to take root on any widespread basis; but, interestingly, middle school children in Baltimore, Maryland created and started using “yo” as their own gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun. Stotko and Troyer’s (2007) study on this development sheds some light on exactly how students use “yo” as a third-person pronoun and proposes some theories regarding the origin of this change in language. This spontaneously produced gender-neutral pronoun has gained as much recognition as many gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronouns proposed by linguistic experts, perhaps as a result of children’s unique understanding of and ability to create language. This recent development indicates that common English speakers will likely spontaneously generate a solution to the current pronoun gap, although this will probably take some time to occur.

When Fredrik Reinfeldt during the TV4 broadcasting of the Ice hockey World Cup final in 2013 was titled Prime Minister instead of State minister it caused a twitter storm. Denominantions are important to us because they are so closely tied to our identity. We may even get upset on behalf of others. A language reform concerning personal pronouns therefore affect many. The gender- neutral pronoun hen received much media attention in 2012. Emotions ran high among both proponents and opponents who shared their opinions on various forums. In this study, seven debate articles that appeared in Swedish metropolitan press in 2012 are being analyzed from a rhetorical perspective. The intention is to investigate whether the debate is being conducted around the same topos, if misleading arguments occur, and to understand if proponents and opponents are trying to persuade each other and readers of their opinion. The result shows that the arguments often revolve around the same topos, but rests on such different values ​​that a comprehension between the parties does not seem likely in the current situation.

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Språk både reflekterar och påverkar vår världssyn. Hur mottas då försök från gräsrotsnivå att introducera ett könsneutralt pronomen i ett språk som speglar den i samhället rådande könsdikotomin? Syftet med denna uppsats är att utifrån Hirdmans och Butlers respektive genusteorier undersöka vilken inställning användare på ett stort svenskt internetforum har till det könsneutrala personliga pronomenet hen. Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av en internetbaserad enkät som besvarades av cirka 150 personer. För att analysera svaren till de slutna frågorna tog vi hjälp av statistikprogrammet SPSS och för att bearbeta de öppna frågorna har vi använt oss av en tematisk analys. Resultatet visar på starkt polariserade åsikter runt hen, där ungefär lika många personer är för som emot ordet. Bland dem som är emot användandet av hen uppfattar de flesta att syftet med ordet är att skapa ett könslöst samhälle, medan hen-förespråkarna ser det som ett komplement till hon och han. Vi har även kunnat se att det finns ett visst samband mellan individens attityd till hen och dennes syn på kön och genus, vilket bekräftar vår hypotes om att det finns en sådan korrelation. / Language reflects our worldview as well as shapes it. How is grass roots level attempts to introduce a gender neutral pronoun received in a society which reflects a gender dichotomy? The purpose of this study is to, inspired by Hirdman’s and Butler’s respective theories on gender, explore what attitudes users of a large Swedish internet community have towards the gender neutral pronoun hen. The current work was performed using an Internet-based survey which was completed by roughly 150 individuals. To analyze the closed ended questions of the survey we used SPSS, whereas the open ended questions were processed with the aid of a thematic method of analysis. The results indicate that the opinions concerning hen are largely polarized, with about as many respondents pro as against the usage of the word. Among those who are against using hen the majority perceive that creating a “genderless” society is the main purpose of the word, whereas most of the word’s intercessors think  that the purpose is to pose as a complement to the pronouns han and hon (he and she).  The study shows that there is a certain connection between the respondent’s attitude towards hen and his/her view on gender, which confirms our hypothesis that there is such a correlation.

Denna studie är en korbusbaserad undersökning som behandlar distributionen av olika funktioner hos pronomenet hen i sociala medier mellan 2012 och 2017. Sedan 2012, året då en stor debatt om hen briserade, har pronomenet börjat ta plats i svenska språket. Med data från korpusarna Bloggmix, Twittermix, Flashback och Familjeliv hämtade från Språkbankens textsamling med hjälp av sökverktyget Korp, analyseras totalt 186 hen. Data har taggats i åtta kategorier: könsöverskridande hen, anonymiserande hen och okänt kön, indefinit och generiskt hen, meta-hen, substantiverat hen, icke-mänskligt, otydligt och övrigt. Resultatet visar att den dominerande funktionen hos hen är anonymiserande hen och okänt kön med totalt 47%. Den andra mest förekommande användningsformen i materialet är generiskt hen med totalt 28%. Funktionen Meta-hen täcker totalt 13%. Detta resultat tyder på att pronomenet debatteras mindre i sociala medier i jämförelse med resultat från tidigare forskning där meta-hen visade sig vara den dominerade användningen under tidigare år (Ledin & Lyngfelt, 2013: 168). Istället är det mer vanligt att använda hen för att till exempel anonymisera, eller så är det inte möjligt att yttra sig om könsidentiteten hos en person då könet är okänt, och att det även istället är mer vanligt att använda pronomenet för att generalisera i olika sammanhang. Ett ytterligare resultat är att användningen av hen har ökat i både Bloggmix och Familjeliv fram till 2016, i Flashback noteras en trend av användningen som går både upp och ner över tid, och i Twittermix minskar användningen över tid. / This thesis is a corpus-based study, which aims to investigate both the distribution and function of the pronoun hen in social media platforms, during the time period 2012-2017. Since 2012, the year when a broad debate sparked regarding the use of hen, the pronoun has increasingly been incorporated into the Swedish language. By using the search-tool Korp, and the collection of texts provided by Språkbanken, 186 occurrences of hen have been analyzed. These occurrences were extracted from various social media corpora, specifically Bloggmix, Familjeliv, Flashback and Twittermix. The data were tagged into eight different categories: Könsöverskridande (Non-gender), Anonymising and Unknown-sex, Indefinite and generic, Meta, Nominalised, Non-human, Unclear and Other. The results show that the dominant function of hen are the anonymized- and unknown-hen, comprising up to 47% of all cases. Also, the second most prominent function is the Generic-hen, with a total of 28%. Finally, the function Meta-hen, covers about 13% of all occurrences. These result indicate that the pronoun is debated less in social media compared to results from previous studies where Meta-hen proved to be the dominant use in previous years (Ledin & Lyngfelt, 2013: 168). Instead it is more common to use hen in order to anonymize, for example, or when it is not possible to comment on the gender identity of a person when the sex is unknown, and that it is more common to generalize in different contexts instead. Moreover, it can be noted that the use of hen had increased on both Bloggmix and Familjeliv until 2016. Conversely, the data shows that its use on Flashback fluctuated over time, and showed a constant decline on Twittermix.

Two categories of sex are considered to not be enough and the use of a masculine pronoun in cases where gender is unknown is said to increase the gaps instead of bringing them together when it comes to gender equality. In 2015, the new word ze (in swedish: hen) was added to the Swedish Academic Glossary and since then the opinions regarding the linguistic change have gone apart. This study aims to provide in-depth knowledge of the gender neutral pronouns ze, the attitudes to and the use of the word in the Swedish language and society. Through a quantitative study with a survey as a method; 226 questionnaires were collected. Then they were analyzed based on the theoretical framework based on a sociolinguistic perspective and queertheory that focuses on normality and deviation. The results from the study show that more than half of the respondents have a positive attitude towards ze. It is primarily in writing that the gender neutral pronoun is used; almost half of the respondents state that they prefer the word in writing situations. Language usage in general affects a persons attitude to the word ze, the more linguistic change someone has accepted, the more likely it is that they start using a future one. The conclusion is that linguistic changes take time, but despite that, ze have been established in the Swedish language and society as a gender neutral pronoun but not as a third gender category.

I denna studie analyseras funktionen av ordet hen i syfte att undersöka hur ordet används i dag. Hen fungerar som könsneutralt pronomen i svenskan men fyller även andra syntaktiska och könsöverskridande funktioner. Materialet har analyserats med en kvantitativ ansats och består av texter från dagspress där de olika förekomsterna av hen har kategoriserats efter funktion och texttyp. Uppsatsens avsnitt om teori behandlar språkplanering, feministisk språkplanering och hens uppkomst. Resultatet visar att hen främst fyller syntaktiska funktioner i dagspress, där 143 av 167 förekomster av ordet användes i funktioner som i den här studien kategoriserats som syntaktiska. Den vanligaste funktionen i materialet var hen i generisk referens. Ordet användes inom 15 olika texttyper inom dagspress, främst artiklar och krönikor, där hen i generisk referens var vanligast i artiklar och hen i maskerande funktion var vanligast i krönikor. / This study analyzes the function of the Swedish gender-neutral pronoun hen with the purpose of examining how the word is used today. Aside from being used as a gender-neutral pronoun, hen is also used in other syntactical functions as well as gender-transcending functions. The study material consists of texts from daily press that have been analyzed through a quantitative method. The various uses of hen have been categorized by function and text type. The theoretical part of the study introduces language planning, feminist language planning, and the origins of hen. The results of the study indicate that hen mainly fills a syntactical function in daily press, as 143 out of 167 uses of the word were in functions that can be categorized as syntactical. The most common function of hen found in the material was hen in generic reference. Hen was used in 15 different text types within daily press, most commonly in articles and columns. In articles, hen in generic reference was most common, while in columns most of the found hen were used in a concealing function.