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(Dated: 1 April 2022)

The pronoun ‘they’ seems deceptively simple at first glance - ask any eleven-year-old and he or she could tell you that it is used to refer to two or more people or objects. Or at least that might have been what was taught to them in school, and while it is not inherently wrong, our understanding of this pronoun has changed over the years, and in this modern day and age, ‘they’ carries a lot more weight than what meets the eye.

The concept of singular ‘they’ has been around for centuries, with the Oxford English Dictionary tracing its roots back to 1375 in the poem Willam and the Werewolf, where it makes its appearance in reference to an unspecified person. Transcribed into modern English, it reads "Each man hurried . . . till they drew near . . . where William and his darling were lying together." This example shows that the idea of altering meanings of words to suit the writer’s needs was already present long before the language was developed into what we know it as today, and specifically in the areas regarding plurality and singularity. Interestingly, this phenomenon is not isolated to ‘they’, and the pronoun ‘you’ also underwent a similar process of being used as a singular pronoun instead of a plural pronoun. In fact, the singular ‘you’ is the more widely-used version in modern English, and even calling it “singular ‘you’” sounds unnecessary as that is what it is automatically assumed to be. In contrast, the now less frequently used “plural ‘you’” is commonly used in linguistic analyses to highlight it as a special, or marked, feature of the text that could potentially serve a specific function in the discourse.

Expanding on that idea, singular ‘they’ is usually used to refer to a person who has been introduced in a way that does not prompt gender information to be associated with it. Such examples include my colleague or my sister’s friend where further reference to them using ‘he/she’ would be too much of a mouthful to say, and therefore ‘they’ would be the most concise and effective way to talk about them despite it being used on a singular individual.

This is also supported by studies on the use of singular ‘they’ in our everyday language, with Newman (1992) proposing the theory that singular ‘they’ is most accepted when it is used with a “nonsolid” antecedent preceding it, which is one that is not specific or pre-defined. That is, however, just a linguist’s way of rationalising ‘they’ being used as a singular pronoun. To further support this, Bjorkman (2017) attempts to explain it by classifying subjects into ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, and ‘inanimate’, and anything that does not fall within these categories, or is in the plural form, would be regarded as ‘they’. Creating such categorisations helps to simplify the entire concept, and makes it easier for a non-native English speaker or prescriptivist English speaker to understand how and when it is to be used.

With the rise in awareness of the LGBTQ+ community in recent years, ‘they’ is also now being used as a gender-neutral term to refer to individuals who prefer not to be identified as the traditional male or female, and therefore choose not to be called ‘he’ or ‘she’. The use of the pronoun in this context though may trigger some raised eyebrows from individuals who are not familiar or not accepting of this concept. This is especially so when it is placed, within a sentence, after a noun with a clear gender attached to it, such as in “George tripped over their shoelace.” Although it can be argued that ‘George’ can be a unisex name, English speakers’ first instinct would generally be to assume that it is belonging to a prototypical male. And to combat this seemingly unwillingness to accept a new meaning of a pre-existing word, there have been alternative gender-neutral pronouns that have sprung up, such as ‘ze’ (pronounced /ziː/). Such alternatives, however, have never seemed to catch on, possibly due to the plain difficulty of introducing a brand-new word into the English lexicon, and ‘they’ is still being used as the gender-neutral pronoun of choice today.

The usage of singular ‘they’ is prevalent in modern-day English and is almost second nature to us to use it whenever we feel that it is appropriate, without considering the fact that it is in fact a singular person that we are referring to. Seeing the words “Is ‘they’ a singular pronoun?” across my screen, my youngest brother’s very adamant response was, “No it’s not! ‘They’ is plural!” But as the author Oscar Wilde says, “With age comes wisdom”, and it will only be a matter of time before my brother realises the complexity of the English language, as well as the beauty that comes along with it.