Fluxus Editions

Abstract. The emergence of gender-inclusive pronouns in Chinese reveals how globalised technological infrastructure for writing can create institutional barriers to orthographic innovation. Written Chinese has only distinguished gender in third-person pronouns for about a century, with 他 ‘he’, 她 ‘she’ and 它 ‘it’ all pronounced as tā in Mandarin. Recently, several new Chinese gender-inclusive pronouns have emerged. The emerging pronouns include a romanised form based on pinyin (‘TA’), as well as Chinese character forms (Sinographs) encoding nonbinary gender (e.g., 「⿰无也」). In this study, I analyse data from two large Chinese-language corpora to investigate the frequency and use of these emerging gender-inclusive pronouns alongside binary pronouns 他 ‘he’ and 她 ‘she’. Results of the corpus analysis highlight how institutional technical requirements—particularly Unicode encoding standards and input method compatibility—shape which linguistic innovations can succeed. Proposed Sinograph pronouns remain virtually absent from mainstream discourse, as they cannot be typed using standard input systems. Meanwhile, ‘TA’ is increasingly accepted in mainstream discourse, with its utility as a gender-neutral pronoun facilitating its emergence as a gender-inclusive form. These findings reveal how the parameters of digital writing can constrain language change through requirements for global standardisation that neither local solutions nor social acceptance alone can overcome. While the introduction of the feminine pronoun 她 ‘she’ in the 1920s required navigation of social and practical linguistic constraints in China, contemporary Chinese pronoun innovation must also work within the parameters of global technological infrastructure governing Sinograph creation. This study thus illuminates broader questions about how globalised contemporary writing technologies shape the possibilities for script reform and innovation.

References References in BIB How to cite How to cite in BIB

Anthony, Laurence. 2022a. “AntConc (Version 4.2.0).” Waseda University. https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software.

———. 2022b. “TagAnt (Version 2.0.5).” Waseda University. https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software.

———. 2023. “Common Statistics Used in Corpus Linguistics,” March. https://laurenceanthony.net/resources/statistics/common_statistics_used_in_corpus_linguistics.pdf.

Arnold, Jennifer E., Heather C. Mayo, and Lisa Dong. 2021. “My Pronouns Are They/Them: Talking about Pronouns Changes How Pronouns Are Understood.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 28 (5): 1688–97. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-01905-0.

Bjorkman, Bronwyn M. 2017. “Singular They and the Syntactic Representation of Gender in English.” Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 2 (1). https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.374.

Bradley, Evan D. 2020. “The Influence of Linguistic and Social Attitudes on Grammaticality Judgments of Singular ‘They’.” Language Sciences 78 (March):101272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2020.101272.

Brokaw, Cynthia Joanne, and Christopher A. Reed, eds. 2010. From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Publishing and Print Culture in Transition, Circa 1800 to 2008. Sinica Leidensia. Leiden ; Boston: Brill.

Cheng, Vincent T.-W. 2016. “Radical Equity: A Case Study of the Use of Chinese Third-Person Pronouns in Taiwan‘s Third Grade Social Studies Textbook.” Intercultural Communication Studies 25 (3): 99–111.

Davey, Janet. 2024. “Taking ‘TA’ Beyond the Binary: In Search of Multimodal Gender-Inclusive Pronouns in Chinese.” Image [&] Narrative 25 (3).

Desagulier, Guillaume. 2017. Corpus Linguistics and Statistics with R. New York, NY: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Farris, Catherine S. 1988. “Gender and Grammar in Chinese: With Implications for Language Universals.” Modern China 14 (3): 277–308.

Ferrari, Pisana. 2022. “The Gradual Rise of Gender-Neutral Pronouns in Hong Kong and Mainland China.” cApStAn, April. https://web.archive.org/capstan.be/the-gradual-rise-of-gender-neutral-pronouns-in-hong-kong-and-mainland-china/.

Hodge, Bob, and Kam Louie. 1998. The Politics of Chinese Language and Culture: The Art of Reading Dragons. Culture and Communication in Asia. London, New York: Routledge.

Hong, Yeonok. 2020. “Change in Chinese Personal Pronouns from a Typological Perspective.” The Linguistics Journal 14 (1): 233–58.

Huang, Xingtao. 2009. “她”字的文化史：女性新代词的发明与认同研究 [the Cultural History of the Chinese Character “她": A Study of the Creation and Acceptance of a New Feminine Pronoun]. 福建 [Fujian]: 福建教育出版社 [Fujian Education Press].

Jung-Palandri, Angela. 1991. “Gender and Sexism in Chinese Language and Literature.” In Schriftfestschrift: Essays on Writing and Language in Honor of John DeFrancis on His Eightieth Birthday, Sino-Platonic Papers, edited by Victor H. Mair, 27:167–70. Sino-Platonic Papers. Philadelphia, PA: Department of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania.

Koon, Wee Kek. 2022. “How Non-Binary Chinese People Seeking a Gender-Neutral Third-Person Pronoun for Themselves Are Coming up with Solutions, Including a New Chinese Character.” South China Morning Post, February. https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3168100/how-non-binary-chinese-people-seeking-gender.

Ling, Yuanzheng. 1989. “‘她’字的创造历史 [the History of the Chinese Character "她"].” 语言教学与研究 [Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies], no. 4, 139–51.

Liu, Lydia He. 1995. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900-1937. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Lu, Zhao. 2021. “他/TA/X也: What Pronouns Do Chinese Queer People Use?” RADII, June. https://radii.co/article/pronouns-chinese-queers.

Moser, David. 1997. “Covert Sexism in Mandarin Chinese.” In Sino-Platonic Papers, edited by Victor H. Mair, 74:1–23. Philadelphia, PA: Department of Asian; Middle Eastern Studies, University of Pennsylvania.

Mullaney, Thomas S. 2017. The Chinese Typewriter: A History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

———. 2024. The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age. Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Myers, James. 2019. The Grammar of Chinese Characters: Productive Knowledge of Formal Patterns in an Orthographic System. New York ; London: Routledge.

Papadopoulos, Ben, and Zipeng Zhu. 2022. “A Conversation with Ziping Zhu.” Gender in Language Project, August. www.genderinlanguage.com/mandarin/zipengzhu.

Pojanapunya, Punjaporn, and Richard Todd. 2016. “Log-Likelihood and Odds Ratio: Keyness Statistics for Different Purposes of Keyword Analysis.” Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 14. https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2015-0030.

Posit Team. 2023. “RStudio: Integrated Development Environment for R.” Boston, MA: Posit Software, PBC. http://www.posit.co/.

Qualtrics. 2023. “Qualtrics XM.” Qualtrics. https://www.qualtrics.com.

Quinan, C. L., and Mina Hunt. 2023. “Non-Binary Gender Markers: Mobility, Migration, and Media Reception in Europe and Beyond.” European Journal of Women‘s Studies 30 (3): 380–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505068211024891.

R Core Team. 2022. “R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing.” Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/.

Robertson, Meg, and Riki Thompson. 2022. “Shifting Attitudes, Shifting Styles: Codifying Gender-Inclusive Language Use in Style Manuals.” In.

Sheydaei, Iman. 2021. “Gender Identity and Nonbinary Pronoun Use: Exploring Reference Strategies for Referents of Unknown Gender.” Gender and Language 15 (3). https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.18871.

Sketch Engine. 2020. “ZhTenTen – Chinese Corpus from the Web.” September 17, 2020. https://www.sketchengine.eu/zhtenten-chinese-corpus/#toggle-id-1.

Su, Jui-Ju, Nicola Molinaro, Margaret Gillon-Dowens, Pei-Shu Tsai, Denise H. Wu, and Manuel Carreiras. 2012. “When ‘He’ Can Also Be ‘She’: An ERP Study of Reflexive Pronoun Resolution in Written Mandarin Chinese.” Frontiers in Psychology 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00151.

Tang, Chelsea, Irene Yi, and Cooper Bedin. 2022. “Mandarin Chinese.” Gender in Language Project. www.genderinlanguage.com/mandarin.

Troncoso, Solangel C., Zach C. Schudson, and Susan A. Gelman. 2023. “Women Versus Females: Gender Essentialism in Everyday Language.” Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 52 (3): 975–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-022-09917-0.

Tsu, Jing. 2022. Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern. New York: Riverhead Books.

UK. 2021. “IRG N2487: UK Submission for IRG Working Set 2021.” IRG Collection 2021, Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set, International Organization for Standardization, May. https://appsrv.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~irg/irg/irg56/IRGN2487UKData002.pdf.

United Nations. 2012. “中文性别包容性语言指南 [Guidelines for Gender-Inclusive Language in Chinese].” https://www.un.org/zh/gender-inclusive-language/guidelines.shtml.

Wu, Junru. 2022. “Neurocognition in the Reading of Chinese Characters.” Journal of Chinese Writing Systems 6 (3): 167–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/25138502211061605.

Xu, Zhe, and Patrick Sturt. 2023. “The Influence of Stereotypical Information on Gender Inference in Chinese.” SN Social Sciences 3 (2): 30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-023-00618-6.

Yuan, Sha, Hanyu Zhao, Zhengxiao Du, Ming Ding, Xiao Liu, Yukuo Cen, Xu Zou, Zhilin Yang, and Jie Tang. 2021. “WuDaoCorpora: A Super Large-Scale Chinese Corpora for Pre-Training Language Models.” AI Open 2:65–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aiopen.2021.06.001.

Zhou, Youguang. 2003. The Historical Evolution of Chinese Languages and Scripts. Pathways to Advanced Skills Series. Foreign Language Publications.

@SOFTWARE{anthony_antconc_2022,
   AUTHOR = {Anthony, Laurence},
   TITLE = {{AntConc} (version 4.2.0)},
   PUBLISHER = {Waseda University},
   URL = {https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software},
}

@SOFTWARE{anthony_tagant_2022,
   AUTHOR = {Anthony, Laurence},
   TITLE = {{TagAnt} (version 2.0.5)},
   PUBLISHER = {Waseda University},
   URL = {https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software},
}

@ARTICLE{anthony_common_2023,
   AUTHOR = {Anthony, Laurence},
   TITLE = {Common statistics used in corpus linguistics},
   URL = {https://laurenceanthony.net/resources/statistics/common_statistics_used_in_corpus_linguistics.pdf},
}

@ARTICLE{arnold_my_2021,
   AUTHOR = {Arnold, Jennifer E. and Mayo, Heather C. and Dong, Lisa},
   TITLE = {My pronouns are \‍textit{they/them}: Talking about pronouns changes how pronouns are understood},
   VOLUME = {28},
   NUMBER = {5},
   PAGES = {1688--1697},
}

@ARTICLE{bjorkman_singular_2017,
   AUTHOR = {Bjorkman, Bronwyn M.},
   TITLE = {Singular \‍textit{they} and the syntactic representation of gender in {English}},
   VOLUME = {2},
   NUMBER = {1},
}

@ARTICLE{bradley_influence_2020,
   AUTHOR = {Bradley, Evan D.},
   TITLE = {The influence of linguistic and social attitudes on grammaticality judgments of singular `they'},
   VOLUME = {78},
   PAGES = {101272},
}

@COLLECTION{brokaw_woodblocks_2010,
   EDITOR = {Brokaw, Cynthia Joanne and Reed, Christopher A.},
   TITLE = {From woodblocks to the Internet: {Chinese} publishing and print culture in transition, circa 1800 to 2008},
   SERIES = {Sinica Leidensia},
   PUBLISHER = {Brill},
}

@ARTICLE{cheng_radical_2016,
   AUTHOR = {Cheng, Vincent T.-W.},
   TITLE = {Radical equity: A case study of the use of {Chinese} third-person pronouns in {Taiwan`s} third grade social studies textbook},
   VOLUME = {25},
   NUMBER = {3},
   PAGES = {99--111},
}

@ARTICLE{davey_taking_2024,
   AUTHOR = {Davey, Janet},
   TITLE = {Taking {`TA'} beyond the binary: In search of multimodal gender-inclusive pronouns in {Chinese}},
   VOLUME = {25},
   NUMBER = {3},
}

@BOOK{desagulier_corpus_2017,
   AUTHOR = {Desagulier, Guillaume},
   TITLE = {Corpus linguistics and statistics with {R}},
   PUBLISHER = {Springer Berlin Heidelberg},
}

@ARTICLE{farris_gender_1988,
   AUTHOR = {Farris, Catherine S.},
   TITLE = {Gender and grammar in {Chinese}: With implications for language universals},
   VOLUME = {14},
   NUMBER = {3},
   PAGES = {277--308},
}

@ARTICLE{ferrari_gradual_2022,
   AUTHOR = {Ferrari, Pisana},
   TITLE = {The gradual rise of gender-neutral pronouns in {Hong Kong} and mainland {China}},
   URL = {https://web.archive.org/capstan.be/the-gradual-rise-of-gender-neutral-pronouns-in-hong-kong-and-mainland-china/},
}

@BOOK{hodge_politics_1998,
   AUTHOR = {Hodge, Bob and Louie, Kam},
   TITLE = {The politics of {Chinese} language and culture: The art of reading dragons},
   SERIES = {Culture and communication in Asia},
   PUBLISHER = {Routledge},
}

@ARTICLE{hong_change_2020,
   AUTHOR = {Hong, Yeonok},
   TITLE = {Change in {Chinese} personal pronouns from a typological perspective},
   VOLUME = {14},
   NUMBER = {1},
   PAGES = {233--258},
}

@BOOK{huang_xingtao___2009,
   AUTHOR = {Huang, Xingtao},
   TITLE = {“{\schinese 她}”{\schinese 字的文化史：女性新代词的发明与认同研究} [The cultural history of the {Chinese} character ``{\schinese 她}": A study of the creation and acceptance of a new feminine pronoun]},
   PUBLISHER = {{\schinese 福建教育出版社} [Fujian Education Press]},
}

@INCOLLECTION{mair_gender_1991,
   AUTHOR = {Jung-Palandri, Angela},
   EDITOR = {Mair, Victor H.},
   TITLE = {Gender and sexism in {Chinese} language and literature},
   BOOKTITLE = {Schriftfestschrift: Essays on writing and language in honor of {John} {DeFrancis} on his eightieth birthday, {Sino}-{Platonic} {Papers}},
   SERIES = {Sino-Platonic Papers},
   PUBLISHER = {Department of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania},
   VOLUME = {27},
   PAGES = {167--170},
}

@ARTICLE{koon_how_2022,
   AUTHOR = {Koon, Wee Kek},
   TITLE = {How non-binary {Chinese} people seeking a gender-neutral third-person pronoun for themselves are coming up with solutions, including a new {Chinese} character},
   URL = {https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3168100/how-non-binary-chinese-people-seeking-gender},
}

@ARTICLE{ling_yuanzheng___1989,
   AUTHOR = {Ling, Yuanzheng},
   TITLE = {“{\schinese 她}”{\schinese 字的创造历史} [The history of the Chinese character "{\schinese 她}"]},
   NUMBER = {4},
   PAGES = {139--151},
}

@BOOK{liu_translingual_1995,
   AUTHOR = {Liu, Lydia He},
   TITLE = {Translingual practice: Literature, national culture, and translated modernity—{China}, 1900-1937},
   PUBLISHER = {Stanford University Press},
}

@ARTICLE{lu_tax_2021,
   AUTHOR = {Lu, Zhao},
   TITLE = {{\schinese 他}/{TA}/{X}{\schinese 也}: What pronouns do {Chinese} queer people use?},
   URL = {https://radii.co/article/pronouns-chinese-queers},
}

@INCOLLECTION{moser_covert_1997,
   AUTHOR = {Moser, David},
   EDITOR = {Mair, Victor H.},
   TITLE = {Covert sexism in {Mandarin} {Chinese}},
   BOOKTITLE = {Sino-Platonic Papers},
   PUBLISHER = {Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Pennsylvania},
   VOLUME = {74},
   PAGES = {1--23},
}

@BOOK{mullaney_chinese_2017,
   AUTHOR = {Mullaney, Thomas S.},
   TITLE = {The {Chinese} typewriter: A history},
   PUBLISHER = {{MIT} Press},
}

@BOOK{mullaney_chinese_2024,
   AUTHOR = {Mullaney, Thomas S.},
   TITLE = {The {Chinese} computer: A global history of the information age},
   SERIES = {Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University},
   PUBLISHER = {{MIT} Press},
}

@BOOK{myers_grammar_2019,
   AUTHOR = {Myers, James},
   TITLE = {The grammar of {Chinese} characters: Productive knowledge of formal patterns in an orthographic system},
   PUBLISHER = {Routledge},
}

@ARTICLE{papadopoulos_conversation_2022,
   AUTHOR = {Papadopoulos, Ben and Zhu, Zipeng},
   TITLE = {A conversation with {Ziping} {Zhu}},
   URL = {www.genderinlanguage.com/mandarin/zipengzhu},
}

@ARTICLE{pojanapunya_log-likelihood_2016,
   AUTHOR = {Pojanapunya, Punjaporn and Todd, Richard},
   TITLE = {Log-likelihood and odds ratio: Keyness statistics for different purposes of keyword analysis},
   VOLUME = {14},
}

@SOFTWARE{posit_team_rstudio_2023,
   AUTHOR = {{Posit Team}},
   TITLE = {{RStudio}: Integrated development environment for {R}},
   PUBLISHER = {Posit Software, {PBC}},
   URL = {http://www.posit.co/},
}

@SOFTWARE{qualtrics_qualtrics_2023,
   AUTHOR = {{Qualtrics}},
   TITLE = {Qualtrics {XM}},
   PUBLISHER = {Qualtrics},
   URL = {https://www.qualtrics.com},
}

@ARTICLE{quinan_non-binary_2023,
   AUTHOR = {Quinan, C. L. and Hunt, Mina},
   TITLE = {Non-binary gender markers: Mobility, migration, and media reception in Europe and beyond},
   VOLUME = {30},
   NUMBER = {3},
   PAGES = {380--390},
}

@SOFTWARE{r_core_team_r_2022,
   AUTHOR = {{R Core Team}},
   TITLE = {R: A language and environment for statistical computing},
   PUBLISHER = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
   URL = {https://www.R-project.org/},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{robertson_shifting_2022,
   AUTHOR = {Robertson, Meg and Thompson, Riki},
   TITLE = {Shifting attitudes, shifting styles: Codifying gender-inclusive language use in style manuals},
}

@ARTICLE{sheydaei_gender_2021,
   AUTHOR = {Sheydaei, Iman},
   TITLE = {Gender identity and nonbinary pronoun use: Exploring reference strategies for referents of unknown gender},
   VOLUME = {15},
   NUMBER = {3},
}

@ONLINE{sketch_engine_zhtenten_2020,
   AUTHOR = {{Sketch Engine}},
   TITLE = {{ZhTenTen} -- {Chinese} corpus from the web},
   URL = {https://www.sketchengine.eu/zhtenten-chinese-corpus/#toggle-id-1},
}

@ARTICLE{su_when_2012,
   AUTHOR = {Su, Jui-Ju and Molinaro, Nicola and Gillon-Dowens, Margaret and Tsai, Pei-Shu and Wu, Denise H. and Carreiras, Manuel},
   TITLE = {When “he” can also be “she”: An {ERP} study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written {Mandarin} {Chinese}},
   VOLUME = {7},
}

@ARTICLE{tang_mandarin_2022,
   AUTHOR = {Tang, Chelsea and Yi, Irene and Bedin, Cooper},
   TITLE = {{Mandarin} {Chinese}},
   URL = {www.genderinlanguage.com/mandarin},
}

@ARTICLE{troncoso_women_2023,
   AUTHOR = {Troncoso, Solangel C. and Schudson, Zach C. and Gelman, Susan A.},
   TITLE = {Women versus females: Gender essentialism in everyday language},
   VOLUME = {52},
   NUMBER = {3},
   PAGES = {975--995},
}

@BOOK{tsu_kingdom_2022,
   AUTHOR = {Tsu, Jing},
   TITLE = {Kingdom of characters: The language revolution that made {China} modern},
   PUBLISHER = {Riverhead Books},
}

@ARTICLE{uk_irg_2021,
   AUTHOR = {{UK}},
   TITLE = {{IRG} N2487: {UK} Submission for {IRG} Working Set 2021},
   URL = {https://appsrv.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~irg/irg/irg56/IRGN2487UKData002.pdf},
}

@ARTICLE{united_nations__2012,
   AUTHOR = {{United Nations}},
   TITLE = {{\schinese 中文性别包容性语言指南} [Guidelines for gender-inclusive language in {Chinese}]},
   URL = {https://www.un.org/zh/gender-inclusive-language/guidelines.shtml},
}

@ARTICLE{wu_neurocognition_2022,
   AUTHOR = {Wu, Junru},
   TITLE = {Neurocognition in the reading of {Chinese} characters},
   VOLUME = {6},
   NUMBER = {3},
   PAGES = {167--183},
}

@ARTICLE{xu_influence_2023,
   AUTHOR = {Xu, Zhe and Sturt, Patrick},
   TITLE = {The influence of stereotypical information on gender inference in {Chinese}},
   VOLUME = {3},
   NUMBER = {2},
   PAGES = {30},
}

@ARTICLE{yuan_wudaocorpora_2021,
   AUTHOR = {Yuan, Sha and Zhao, Hanyu and Du, Zhengxiao and Ding, Ming and Liu, Xiao and Cen, Yukuo and Zou, Xu and Yang, Zhilin and Tang, Jie},
   TITLE = {{WuDaoCorpora}: A super large-scale {Chinese} corpora for pre-training language models},
   VOLUME = {2},
   PAGES = {65--68},
}

@BOOK{zhou_historical_2003,
   AUTHOR = {Zhou, Youguang},
   TITLE = {The historical evolution of {Chinese} languages and scripts},
   SERIES = {Pathways to Advanced Skills Series},
   PUBLISHER = {Foreign Language Publications},
}

Janet Ganon-Davey (2024), “Beyond the alphabet, beyond the binary, maybe beyond “Chinese”? Exploring the emergence of gender-inclusive Chinese pronouns,” in Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2024 (Yannis Haralambous, Ed.), Grapholinguistics and Its Applications, Vol. 12, Brest: Fluxus Editions, 533–550.


@INPROCEEDINGS{gla12-dave,
   AUTHOR = {Janet Ganon-Davey},
   EDITOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {{Beyond the alphabet, beyond the binary, maybe beyond “Chinese”? Exploring the emergence of gender-inclusive Chinese pronouns}},
   BOOKTITLE = {{Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2024}},
   SERIES = {{Grapholinguistics and Its Applications}},
   VOLUME = {12},
   PUBLISHER = {Fluxus Editions},
   ADDRESS = {Brest},
   YEAR = {2024},
   PAGES = {533--550},
   DOI = {https://doi.org/10.36824/2024-graf-dave},
}