What We Talk about What We Talk about Gender-Inclusive Language: Teaching and Learning the Singular “They” in the First-Year Writing Classroom

Abstract

Over the past decade, interest in the singular “they” has burgeoned in scholarly venues and mainstream media, but writing studies scholars are surprisingly absent in these conversations. To contribute a writing studies perspective, I studied the impact, value, and challenges of teaching this gender-inclusive pronoun in three sections of my institution’s required first-year writing course. I found that, prior to instruction on gender-inclusive language, students used the singular “they” liberally and were not aware of how gender-inclusive they were in their writing and speaking. After learning multiple gender-inclusive writing strategies, students indicated increased awareness of their own use of gender-inclusive language, interest in using it, confidence in their ability to use it, and appreciation of its relevance to their own lives. They preferred the singular “they” over other gender-inclusive writing strategies. My study concludes that, in addition to students’ work, their self-assessments are a vital, complementary source of information for assessing the value, impact, and challenges of teaching gender-inclusive language, as the nexus of perceived use, interest, ability, and relevance drives whether students will transfer their learning to other contexts. These findings may also be relevant to teaching other forms of inclusive, bias-free language in writing courses.