Pronouns and social justice in the linguistics classroom

Abstract

My introductory Linguistics course was for many years shaped by the field’s distaste for social justice issues such as cisheterosexism, racism, colonialism and ableism. Like many other linguists, I concentrated my teaching on the core formal subfields. This essay considers how the colonial roots of Linguistics have shaped the field and my teaching, and reflects on my efforts to integrate social justice concerns into my teaching, using the changing grammar of non-binary pronouns as one entry point.