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July 7, 2025 89 mins

Pronouns are little words that cause big problems. In this episode, The Two Humans discuss the quest for a non-gendered, third-person, personal pronoun.

Episode 78: BYOP (Bring Your Own Pronoun): The Profound Power of Personal Pronouns.

An Intro to Anthro with 2 Humans

Human Number One, John McCray, and Human Number Two, John Lehr, re-assess what it means to be human.

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Resources:

 

Anderson, James

1792 Grammatical Disquisitions. The Bee or Literary Weekly Intelligencer, Volume Eleventh, James Anderson, Edinburgh, Scotland, pp. 120-130. 

 

Baron, Dennis

2020 What’s Your Pronoun? Beyond He & She. Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York, NY.  

 

Behrens, Susan J. 

2014 English Pronouns Revealed. Research and Teaching in Developmental Education, Spring 2014, Vol. 30, No. 2, (Spring 2014), pp. 91-95.  

 

Blake, Frank R. 

1934 The Origin of Pronouns of the First and Second Person. The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 55, No. 3 (1934), pp. 244-248. 

 

Bullock, Barbara

2001 On the Use of ils for elles: Gender Syncretism in the History of French. The French Review, Mar., 2001, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Mar., 2001), pp. 700-709

 

Curzan, Anne

1996 Third Person Pronouns in the ‘Peterborough Chronicle.’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 1996, Vol. 97, No. 3 (1996), pp. 301-314.

 

Fleming, Grace

2018 Dangling Participle: Explanation and Examples. ThoughtCo.com, December 22, 2018, www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-dangling-participle-1857150.

Flom, George T.

1908 Contributions to the History of English. I: The Origin of the Pronoun “She.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Apr., 1908, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Apr., 1908), pp. 115-125.  

 

Foertsch, Julie and Morton Ann Gernsbacher

1997 In Search of Gender Neutrality: Is Singular “They” a Cognitively Efficient Substitute for Generic “He”? Psychological Science, Mar., 1997, Vol. 8, No. 2 (mar., 1997), pp. 106-111. 

 

Grammarly.com

2024 What Are Split Infinitives? Meaning and Examples. Grammarly.com, January 18, 2024, www.grammarly.com/blog/grammar/split-infinitives/.

 

Hogan, Pat, Gayle Roberts and Farren Gillaspie

2017 Why Does Language Matter? Counterpoints, 2017, Vol. 485, Basically Queer: An Intergeneration Introduction to LGBTQA2S+ Lives (2017), pp. 8-17. 

 

Hope, Jonathan

1993 Second Person Singular Pronouns in Records of Early Modern ‘Spoken’ English. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 1993, Vol. 94, No. 1 (1993), pp. 83-100. 

 

HRC Foundation

2025 Glossary of Terms. Human Rights Campaign (website), accessed May 26, 2025, www.hrc.org/resources/glossary-of-terms.

 

Kottak, Conrad Phillip

2011 Cultural Anthropology: Appreciating Cultural Diversity, Fourteenth Addition. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.

Lakoff, Robin Tolmach

1975 Language and Woman’s Place in Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries (ed. by Mary Bucholz), 2004, Oxford University Books, Oxford, UK.

1990 Talking Power: The Politics of Language. Basic Books, New York, NY.  

 

Livia, Anna

2001 Pronoun Envy: Literary Uses of Linguistic Gender. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.  

 

MacNamara, Jessica, Sarah Glann and Paul Durlak

2017 Experiencing Misgendered Pronouns: A Classroom Activity to Encourage Empathy. Teaching Sociology, JULY 2017, Vol. 45, No. 3 (JULY 2017), pp. 269-278.

 

Martyna, Wendy

1980 Beyond the “He/Man” Approach: The Case for Nonsexist Language. Signs, Spring, 1980, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring, 1980), pp. 482-493.

 

McWhorter, John

2025 Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Sevel Little Words. Avery, New York, NY.  

 

Pennebaker, James W.

2011 The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say about Us. Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, NY. 

 

Schilt, Kristen and Laurel Westbrook

2015 Bathroom Battlegrounds and Penis Panics. Contexts, SUMMER 2015, Vol. 11, No. 3, Moving through Time and Space (SUMMER 2015), pp. 26-31. 

 

Scribendi.com

2025 Where Did the Oxford Comma Come From, and Why Is It So Important?. Scribendi.com (website), accessed July 5, 2025, www.scribendi.com/academy/ articles/oxford_comma_importance.en.html.  

 

Shakespeare, William

2025 Act 3, Scene 1 from Romeo and Juliet. Th

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