THE USE OF GENDERED PRONOUNS WITH ANIMAL REFERENTS IN ENGLISH

Abstract

Speakers and writers of English can choose whether to mark a high level of sentience in a nonhuman animal, by selecting the human and gendered terms (he, she, who) rather than the inanimate and ungendered terms (it, which). This article reports an investigation of the Anglo-American literature, to explore the extent to which speakers and writers use gendered pronouns 'he' and 'she' where the antecedent is a nonhuman animal. The authors also attempt to identify pragmatic factors and metaphoric associations that trigger personalizing of animals in literature and everyday conversations.

Headnote

Abstract

Speakers and writers of English can choose whether to mark a high level of sentience in a nonhuman animal by selecting the human and gendered terms (he, she, who) rather than the inanimate and ungendered terms (it, which). This paper reports an investigation of the Anglo-American literature to explore the extent to which speakers and writers use gendered pronouns 'he' and 'she' where the antecedent is a nonhuman animal. We also attempt to identify pragmatic factors and metaphoric associations that trigger personalizing of animals in literature and everyday conversations.

Keywords: gendered pronouns, animal referent, terms.

Most grammars of modern English prescribe to use the pronoun 'it' when referring to an animal, except for cases when the speaker knows the sex of the animal. However actual language use shows a great divergence from this prescriptive statement. If we look at speakers' behavior, it appears that gendered terms he and she by far outnumber instances of 'it' in everyday casual speech.

When nonhuman animate entities are referred to, in English it is possible to use either the human and gendered terms he, she, and who or the inanimate and ungendered terms it and which). Dictionaries and grammars explain quite clearly the areas of choice between he/she and it. Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan describe the use of he and she as "personal reference," and of it as "non-personal"i. They point out the main semantic areas where the speaker has a choice (babies; "animals, especially pets"; countries; and ships). They also identify the meaning of the choice: "Personal reference expresses greater familiarity or involvement. Non-personal reference is more detached".

In most cases, researchers agree that personal involvement or a close relationship with the animal seems to be the most relevant factor in pronoun choice: "[T]he use of he and she seems to signal personal involvement or empathy for the referent in the case of [...] an owner of an animal, someone who is emotionally attached or values the referent, [... ] or someone attached to a specific animal. By the way of contrast, the use of it seems to signal lack of involvement or empathy with the referent in the case of [... ] [a speaker] who is not personally attached to the referent or wishes to devalue it, an entity which is acted upon, and finally a nonspecific animal or class of animals with which personal involvement is out of the question"2.

Animacy is not a simple binary option. The way these pronouns are used in English demonstrates a scale of animacy, whose normal order places humans at the top; animals second; moving machines (such as ships, planes and cars) third; and the plant and mineral world at the bottom. It may appear strange that moving machines are placed higher in this scale than living plants, but this is the English usage.

This scale of animacy reflects (and also shapes) an attitude to the way the world is structured. Where there is a choice (to use he/she or it) - whether with dogs or ships - a speaker's selection of one variant or another is meaningful. When a nonhuman is treated linguistically like a human, it raises the animacy status of the nonhuman, indicates to sentience (the ability of animals to feel, to be aware of what is going on), and places the nonhuman closer to the human.

This paper reports an investigation of the Anglo-American literature to explore the extent to which writers use gendered pronouns 'he' and 'she' where the antecedent is a nonhuman animal. In my own corpora, there are very few examples of it referring to an animal, while hundreds of masculine and feminine pronouns can be found. It may seem surprising at first, but a more detailed investigation of corpus data reveals that the observed pattern is the rule rather than the exception.

The class of animate creatures we call animals are situated at a rank lower than human beings. All animals have biological sex, since they can also be referred to by 'he' or 'she', though this is an extension of the scope of 'personal' reference. This is a possibility, but in practice it is a more complex issue.

Those few linguists who attempt to discuss the whole issue, commonly subdivide animals into two kinds, labeled in hierarchical terms: 'higher' and 'lower' animals3. However this is not a zoological or evolutionary distinction, but a culturally determined and anthropocentric one. Higher animals are those with which human beings have 'the closest connection', or those of special interest or use to people4, e.g. pets, farm animals and racehorses. The owners regard their pets in particular as equal to humans, and capable of 'speaking'. Therefore these animals are most likely to be spoken to in direct address. This class often are denoted by specific lexical terms for the male and female of the species, as well as have co-referential probability with he or she rather than it: e.g. cow/she, bull/ he, ram/he, ewe/she:

(1) "Tom tied old Whitey (cow) to the back of his wagon and put her calf in the end of the box so she could see her offspring and not bellow for it" (Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand, p. 19).

(2) "The stallion snorted as if he disagreed with Bettario's opinion of 'lucky'" (Anderson, Ill Wind: The oil crisis has begun, p. 244).

(3) "The bitch had been but a pup herself then, striving to make her place in the pack. ".She had been his favorite, and he had felt something when he had to put her down with the rest" (Bahr, The Year of Jubilo, p. 62-63).

(4) "What happened, Sally?" he asked his black mare, but the horse only rolled her eyes at him and pulled at the bit. The thunder was close now, and she was nervous" (Bahr, The Year of Jubilo, p. 76).

(5) "It was a normal ritual, and the dog, whose name was Beowulf, took no interest in it. He lapped out his tongue in a yawn, raised his hindquarters and stretched. He had his own ritual: yawning, stretching, scratching, licking" (Bahr, The Year of Jubilo, p. 132).

(6) "The horse rolled his eyes as Stribling approached, and sidestepped until Stribling took up the trailing rains. "He is called Xenophon," said Stribling" (Bahr, The Year of Jubilo, p. 44).

(7) "That was a favorite fantasy of Nurse Angela's - she hated smoking; just the look of a cigarette dangling from anyone's mouth made her remember a French-speaking Indian who'd come to see her father about digging a well and had stuck his cigarette in one of her cat's faces, burning its nose! - the cat, an especially friendly spayed female, had jumped up in the Indian's lap. The cat had been named Bandit - she'd had the classic masked face of a raccoon" (Irving, The cider house rules, p. 8).

(8) "She was back on the farm in Battle Lake, Minnesota. She was nine years old and she could hear her little red rooster, Mr. Barnes, crowing at first light... He was just a little red rooster, overly pugnacious, an ingrate. He could have been a beautiful bird if he hadn't gotten into so many fights" (Jones, I want to live!, p. 686).

(9) 'The horse doctor had been trying to vaccinate the bull in the neck, but the rope through the ring in the bull's nose didn't keep the bull from tossing his head from side to side, knocking the horse doctor against the side of the chute" (Armstrong, Sounder, p. 60).

In these examples 'higher animals' such as a cow, a horse, a rooster, a cat, a dog are personalized by using co-referential pronouns he or she. The personification is intensified by the introduction of special terms for male and female species such as dog/bitch, cow/bull, stallion/mare, rooster. Besides, in most cases the animals are given male or female names corresponding to their sex: Mr. Barnes (rooster), Sally (mare), Beowulf (dog), Whitey (cow), Xenophon (horse).

If the speaker doesn't know the sex of the animal, a common term may be used (e.g. horse v. stallion/mare); or there is the term with male reference used as the common term (e.g. dog), or a term with female reference (e.g. goose, duck). If the sex is not known, there is a tendency to use he as the co-referential pronoun with such 'higher' animals, rather than it, cats are more likely to be she generically, as in:

(10) "Arching his neck and his forelegs, a bright brown horse drew a buggy crisply but sedately past; in the washed black spokes, sunlight twittered" (Agee, A death in the family, p. 98).

(11) "I always come back," she said. "Like the cat the man was always trying to get rid of in the song. He tied her to the railroad tracks and he threw her into the ocean with a rock, but she always came back the very next day" (Berriault, Women in their beds, p. 186).

Even where the sex of the animal is known to the speaker, however, he is favoured; or speakers may differ amongst themselves in their use of he or she5. Or else there can be fluctuation in pronoun choice by the speaker or amongst speakers, with it also occurring.

Pronoun switches are frequent, and a range of emotive factors are involved in the choice of pronouns referring to animals. For example, the owners of a cat (or "cat people") as a rule refer to the dog that chased their cat as it rather than he or she, conveying their emotional attitude or intimacy towards their cat, but at the same time signaling distance towards the dog. The reverse pattern is used by "dog people".

Such pronoun-switching requires further investigation. However, MacKay and Konishi6 suggest seven possible reasons for pronoun-switching with animal reference generally. These motivations are a contrast between a character's perspective and the narrator's in a story, personal v. impersonal points of view, the owner's v. the non-owner's, emotional v. non-emotional involvement with the referent, positive v. negative evaluation, specific v. generic reference, active agent v. passive 'object'. A combination of factors may be involved. Note the following examples:

(12) "They left the house about eleven that morning after the McPheron brothers had finished the morning feeding... They set out in the bright cold day, riding in the pickup, the girl seated in the middle between them with a blanket over her lap. Once they saw a lone coyote in the open, running, a steady distance-covering lope, its long tail floating out behind like a trail of smoke. Then it spotted the pickup, stopped, started to move again, running hard now, and crossed the highway and hit a section of woven fence and was instantly thrown back but at once sprang up again and hit the fence again and at last in a panic scrambled up over the wire fence like a human man would, and ran on, loping again in the open, traversing the wide country on the other side of the road without once pausing or even slowing down to look back.

Is he all right? The girl said.

Appears like it, Raymond said.

Until somebody gets after him, Harold said, chasing after him in a pickup with coyote dogs. And shoots him.

Do they do that?

They do" (Haruf, Plainsong, p. 178-179).

(13) "A black cat approached from the other side of the street. For a while, it stood on the edge of the sidewalk and its green eyes looked straight at Bessie. Then slowly and cautiously it drew near. For years Bessie had hated all animals - dogs, cats, pigeons, even sparrows. But now Bessie felt love for this creature that had no home, no possessions, no doors or keys, and lived on God's bounty. Before the cat neared Bessie, it smelled her bag. Then it began to rub its back on her leg, lifting up its tail and meowing. The poor thing is hungry. I wish I could give her something. How can one hate a creature like this, Bessie wondered" (Singer, The Key, p. 499).

In these examples a combination of factors account for pronounswitching, such as: a contrast between a character's perspective and the narrator's in a story, personal v. impersonal points of view, emotional v. non-emotional involvement with the referent. The coyote and the cat become personalized as people feel empathy to the animals. To show empathy means to identify with another's feelings, to emotionally put yourself in the place of another.

The distinction between 'higher' and 'lower' animals however is not absolute, and inevitably so, since it is a vague distinction in the first place. Monkeys are wild animals and are not obviously associated with human beings, as well as lions and tigers, although Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik7 cite them under the heading of 'higher animals'. This is apparently because their sex differences are lexicalised (lion(-ess), tiger/tigress), and this lexicalisation may be presumed to indicate a particular human interest in these animals and not others. Many wild animals, however, are now familiar to human beings through zoos, but are not lexically marked in this way; others have more cultural relevance than lions and tigers, but may not be classified as 'higher animals' (e.g. rats and spiders which co-habit with humans; beavers and bears as the 'national' animals of North America). Here are some examples of personalizing wild animals:

(14) "She met Oscar Lutz with a wild deer which he had shot and killed in the timber a mile east of Stove Creek, - a young buck that, quivering and at bay, seemed the last survivor of his comrades that had once roamed the east-Nebraska country" (Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand, p. 176).

(15) "The deer, a doe, had gone out into the new ice, all the way to the middle, and had crashed through. She would work her front legs up and prop herself on the ice that way, like a woman resting her elbows at a table, and then she would kick and thrash, trying to pull herself back up, but would crash through again and slide back into the water. Then she would resume swimming in circles and slide back into the water" (Bass, The hermit's story, p. 161).

(16) "I was reminded of a time I almost walked into a female grizzly with a nearly grown cub. How we had stood there posturing, how she had glanced down at her cub just that way, giving me the opportunity to let her know she didn't need to kill me. We could both go on our way" (Proulx, The Half-Skinned Steer, p. p. 777).

(17) "Gracious Jay, did you ever see one? A panther?"

"Saw one'd been shot."

"Goodness," Mary said.

"A mean-looking varmint."

"I know," she said. "I mean, I bet he was. ." (Agee, A death in the family, p. 209).

In the examples (14) and (15) 'deer' is the referent/antecedent of the pronouns 'he/she'. A special interest of humans to this animal is explained by the fact that deer is a 'national' animal in the North America. There are many different species of deer in the United States. Ranging in size, habitat, and habits, deer can be found in every continental state. In the example (16) grizzly is personalized. First, grizzly bear is also a 'national' animal in the US. Besides, it's a female with a cub which allows to use co-referential pronoun 'she'. In the examples (12) and (17) the wild animals panther and coyote are used with co-referential pronoun 'he'. In both examples 'he' functions generically as people don't know and in fact are not interested in the sex of the animals. Personalizing of these animals is accounted for by the fact that people living in the country are more familiar with wild animals. People may hunt them or may be forced to defend themselves against them. Hence the use of personal pronouns with wild animals.

Conversely, what are seen as domestic animals in western countries such as Britain and the United States, and hence 'higher animals' (e.g. dogs and cats), are elsewhere not, or are even regarded as pests. Monkeys have at least been kept as pets; but in fact almost any animal can be kept as a pet, so that almost any animal can thus be a 'higher animal':

(18) "Without a word the boy cut the strap at the fawn's throat, and even while he was unloosing the piece around her neck, she darted from him lightly, gracefully, into the hazel-brush. . With his head still averted the boy said tensely, "I found her. 'n' raised her. myself" (Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand, p. 20).

(19) "But his monkey Grinn, a present from the Queen, was dead; and also Sjup the raccoon and the parrot who had sat on his shoulder at meals and the weasel who wore a bell on his neck and hunted rats among the rocks" (Barrett, Ship Fever and other stories, p. 39).

In the examples above we see that a fawn, a monkey, a raccoon, a parrot and even a weasel are kept as pets, so all of them are personalized either through gendered pronouns or the animate relative pronoun 'who'.

Moreover, in the genres of children's literature and film and poetic diction any animal can be anthropomorphised (typically to a male) and given a name and story role: e.g. Babar and Dumbo the elephants, Mickey Mouse and Jiminy Cricket. It is all about a matter of perspective.

'Lower animals' are defined implicitly, and negatively, i.e. those having no special relevance to human beings, or having no close connection to them. As Quirk et alii state8, they also tend to be animals where laypersons have no real knowledge about their sex, e.g. insects, snakes and fish. Therefore the pronoun it is the 'logical' or 'natural' pronoun to use (and which is also most likely instead of who). In connection with this ignorance, another connotation of it is especially relevant here, namely its association with the 'alien', the unknown. Moreover, since the examples usually given also tend to be animals that are often least liked by human beings, e.g. insects and snakes, the use of it, which is also associated with negative emotiveness, is especially pertinent9.

Some insects, however, are rather closely connected with human beings, inhabiting their homes or serving their interests (e.g. bees and silkworms). Reference by he or she is quite likely therefore: usually she by a sort of symbolic association of smallness10. However, in the following modern examples, either he or she is used by the speakers with reference to lower animals, signifying their empathy with them:

(20) "All the windows were open; in one of them, a spider had spun her web" (Bahr, The Year of Jubilo, p. 176).

(21) "When the field mouse poked his whiskered nose out of Wall Strut's eyeholes, Old Priam showed his yellow teeth and laughed. The field mouse would sleep, waking on warm days to forage, and that summer would raise his family where once a man's thoughts made bitter passage" (Bahr, The Year of Jubilo, p. 299).

(22) "The robin had hold of a worm; he braced his heels, walked backward, and pulled hard. It stretched like a rubber band and snapped in two" (Agee, A death in the family, p. 299).

(23) "Rufus saw a giant butterfly clearly, and how he moved his wings so quietly and grandly, and the colors of the wings, and how he sprang up into the sky and how the colors all took fire in the sunshine" (Agee, A death in the family, p. 306).

(24) "The catbird stopped her fussing in the wilted lilac bush" (Armstrong, Sounder, p. 107).

In these examples the co-referential pronoun for a spider and a catbird is she and for a field mouse, robin and butterfly is he. The general tendency is to use the pronoun 'he' in the personification of 'lower animals'. As we see even butterfly is 'he'. This is due to the fact that 'he' is used as generic pronoun both in reference to people and animals whose sex is unknown or irrelevant. On the other hand, sometimes 'she' is used due to the metaphorical association of small, weak creatures with feminine gender.

Conclusions

The choice of gender in personifying animals, birds and other living beings is often based on biological sex differences. In most cases it depends on the speaker's or writer's attitude to a certain living being: big, strong, ugly, aggressive animals, birds are considered to be masculine and small, weak, gentle, with a maternal instinct are mostly feminine. Generally, researchers agree that personal involvement appears to be the most relevant factor in pronoun choice.

The cut-off point within the class of animals differs among speakers, depending on their professions, background, environment, or similar factors. For someone who grew up in a big city/town and has never lived in the countryside, it is extremely likely that only pets, or even just dogs and cats, can be he or she, whereas a badger or fox (which the speaker may not ever have seen) will be an it. On the other hand, it is highly probable that a farmer will refer to the animals on his farm as he or she, that a hunter will refer to the hunted animal as he, the fisherman to the fish in his catch also as he.

We should thus conclude that the prescriptive rules in grammars regarding anaphoric pronouns to be selected to refer to animals are not applied in everyday conversations. Since some degree of personal involvement is commonly present when speakers talk about animals, neuter pronouns are the least expected forms. Pets will be its only derogatorily, intentionally offensive or when talking about them in a detached manner. While the status of wild animals depends to a large extent on the speaker's 'civilization' background. Other factors that may influence pronoun choice are: a) saliency of the animal in the discourse ("centrality" according MacKay and Konishi11); b) size (the bigger the more likely he12); c) and various (supposed or real) character attributes (brave, wise = male; weak, passive = female etc.13).

Footnote

Notes

1 Biber et alii, 1999, p. 317-18.

2 MacKay et alii, 1980, p. 155.

3 see Brades, 1975, p. 21-23; Quirk et alii, 1985, p. 109-110.

4 Quirk et alii, 1985, p. 110.

5 Erades, 1975, p. 21.

6 MacKay et alii, 1980, p. 155.

7 Quirk et alii, 1985, p. 109.

8 Quirk et alii, 1985, p. 110.

9 Wales, 1996, p. 143.

10 see Poutsma, 1914, p. 325, MacKay et alii, 1980, p. 153.

11 MacKay et alii, 1980, p. 155.

12 ibidem, p. 153.

13 ibidem, p. 154.

References

References

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ERADES, P.A. Points of Modern English Syntax. Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1975 [=Brades, 1975].

MAC KAY, Donald G., KONISHI, Toshi. Personification and the Pronoun Problem //Women's Studies International Quarterly 3, 1980. P. 149-163 [=Mac Key, 1980].

POUTSMA, H. A Grammar of Late Modern English. Groningen: Noordhoff, 1914 [=Poutsma, 1914].

QUIRK, R., GREENBAUM S., LEECH G., SVARTVIK J. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman, 1985 [=Quirk et alii, 1985].

WAGNER, S. Gender in English Pronouns: Myth and Reality. PhD dissertation. Online edition at http://www.pdfs.name, 2003 [=Wagner, 2003].

WALES, K. Personal Pronouns in Present-day English. CUP, 1996 [=Wales, 1996].

Texts

AGEE, James. A death in the family. Vintage Books. A division of Random House. Inc. New York, 1998.

ALDRICH, Bess Streeter. A Lantern in Her Hand. New York: Puffin Books, 1997.

ANDERSON, Kevin J., BEASON, D. Ill Wind: The Oil Crisis has begun. New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, 2007.

ARMSTRONG, William H. Sounder. Harper Trophy: New York, 2002.

BAHR, Howard. The Year of Jubilo. New York: Picador USA, 2001.

BARRETT, Andrea. Ship Fever and other Stories. New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 1996.

BASS, Rick. The Hermit's Story. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.

BERRIAULT, Gina. Women in Their Beds. New and Selected Stories. Washington, D.C.: Counter Point, 1997.

HARUF, Kent. Plainsong. New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random House. Inc., 1999.

IRVING, John. The Cider House Rules. Ballantine Books: New York, 1993.

JONES, Thom. I want to live! //The Best American Short Stories of the Century. John Updike (editor), Katrina Kenison (coeditor). Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, New York, 1999.

PROULX, Annie. The Half-Skinned Steer //The Best American Short Stories of the Century. John Updike (editor), Katrina Kenison (coeditor). Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, New York, 1999.

SINGER, Isaac Bashevis. The Key //The Best American Short Stories of the Century. John Updike (editor), Katrina Kenison (coeditor). Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, New York, 1970.