Generic antecedents

The question of appropriate style for using pronouns to refer to such generic antecedents in the English language became politicized in the 1970s, and remains a matter of substantial dispute.

Many languages share the following issue with English: the generic antecedent is a representative individual of a class, whose gender is unknown or irrelevant, but pronouns are gender-specific. In languages such as English that distinguish natural gender in pronouns but not grammatical gender in nouns, normally masculine, but sometimes feminine, forms of pronouns are used for the generic reference, in what is called the generic usage of the pronoun. The context makes the generic intent of the usage clear in communication.

Unless there is reason to believe the speaker thinks ambitious academics are always female in the relevant context, the use of she in this sentence must be interpreted as a generic use. Traditionally both he and they were used for this purpose but, particularly since the nineteenth century, English style guides have frequently recommended the otherwise masculine he as a singular generic pronoun. Since the middle of the twentieth century the use of he for this purpose has been discouraged, partly because use of he is perceived as subtly biasing the listener to assume the antecedent is masculine. Various alternatives have been proposed.

In French both the singular and plural pronouns in the third person are marked for grammatical gender, and the antecedent always has grammatical gender. The masculine form of "they", ils, is always used when referring to a plural and grammatically masculine antecedent, while for plural antecedents that are grammatically feminine the feminine form elles of "they" is used. Likewise, in the singular the third person pronoun il is used to refer to grammatically masculine antecedents and elle is used to refer to grammatically feminine antecedents. Thus, for both generic and non-generic antecedents, the natural gender of the antecedent, whether known or unknown, is irrelevant, as the deciding factor for the choice of a referring pronoun is the grammatical gender of the antecedent.

Some French speakers advocate the use of created gender-free pronouns, such as illes or els for ils et elles ("they (masculine) and they (feminine)") and celleux or ceulles for celles et ceux ("those (feminine) and those (masculine)").

In spoken Mandarin Chinese, and in the pinyin form of writing Mandarin in the Latin alphabet, there is no distinction between "he" and "she" (tā in each case), nor is there a distinction between "they (masculine)" and "they (feminine)" (tāmen in each case). However, when Mandarin is written in characters, a gender distinction is made: tā is written as 他 or 她 for "he" or "she" respectively, with -men (们) added for the plural. For a plural generic antecedent such as "people (in general)", the referring pronoun will always be written as the masculine plural form unless the generic group is known to be inherently female (as in "women (in general)"), in which case the feminine form is used. For a singular generic antecedent such as "someone", the referring pronoun is always written as the masculine singular form unless the generic antecedent is known to be inherently female (as in "(an unspecified) woman").

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