The comprehensibility and appreciation of non-binary pronouns in newspaper reporting. The case of hen and die in Dutch

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of the recently introduced Dutch non-binary 3rd person pronouns hen and die on tesssxt comprehensibility and text appreciation in the context of newspaper reporting on non-binary persons. Moreover, it presents a first measurement of Flemish people’s familiarity with and attitudes towards this pronominal reform in Dutch in its early stage. In a survey experiment we compared the use of non-binary hen and die (both combined with hen as object and hun as possessive form) with established referential strategies. We also examined the potential mediating role of perceived awkwardness of the referential strategy used and tested the moderating effect of cueing, i.e. making readers aware of the fact that the person reported on identifies as non-binary and prefers non-binary pronouns. The results show that perceived awkwardness explains the lower comprehensibility and appreciation scores of non-binary hen and that cueing improves those scores. Overall, our findings suggest that especially the non-binary pronoun die has the potential to be successfully implemented.