Towards an engaged linguistics

Abstract

The papers in this special issue address themes from They, Hirself, Em, and YOU 2019 (THEY 2019), a conference that brought together researchers working on topics relating to nonbinary gender in language, particularly in pronouns. The papers collected in this special issue provide an overview of the current state of research and practice on nonbinary pronouns as they are currently used in English, as well as connecting the current practices in English to nonbinary pronouns in other languages. There are two sections. In the first section are five traditional academic articles on non-binary language and pronouns; the second section features three short technical articles that raise practical and/or pedagogical issues related to non-binary pronouns from a scholarly perspective. Authors in this volume investigate these topics not only for the advancement of linguistic scholarship, but also to make that scholarship visible to other fields and for broader advocacy.