Putting our pronouns in email signatures: Why would we?

Friday, 19 February 2021

OPINION: A news article this week about public servants including pronouns in their email signatures had radio hosts chasing me for interviews.

In one of them, the host glanced at his screen and exclaimed ‘’ooh, got a bit of a response on this one, we might have to come back to it’’.

As a linguist I’m delighted – there has never been a time when the average New Zealander has been so interested in talking about a grammatical word class. But I’m not surprised, because when people say they want to talk about pronouns, it’s not really about the pronouns, is it?

A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun. There are many types, used as subjects (‘’that looks yummy'’), objects (‘’give it to me’’), or to indicate possession (‘’hey! that’s mine’’), and so on.

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We use personal pronouns to substitute for a person’s name. Without them, we would end up saying laborious things such as: “Julia is looking forward to Julia’s G&T when Julia finishes Julia’s work today’’.

In te reo Māori, the personal pronoun ia is used for people of all genders. In English, pronouns are grammatically gendered. When speaking about a person we have to make a choice between using she, he, or a gender-neutral pronoun such as the singular they.

We can’t necessarily tell a person’s gender pronouns just by looking at them.

We don’t use third-person pronouns to talk about ourselves, so someone could talk to us for hours without them coming up naturally.

We might choose to assert our pronouns (for example by saying “I use she-her pronouns”), but mainly they will be used by others talking about us. So which ones should they use?

Putting our personal pronouns in email signatures, or on Zoom, or in social media profiles, makes it clear how we want others to speak of us, and this can be useful for several groups.

For gender-diverse people, it’s a way of indicating how they identify so others can more easily see and respect that part of them.

Constantly being misgendered is exhausting, stressful and often painful. Gender-diverse people likely number in the hundreds of thousands in New Zealand and, counting those who love them as well, this is a lot of people who are likely to care about gender inclusivity in language.

If only gender-diverse people indicate their pronouns like this, they are singled out, as if gender identity only matters to a minority rather than to us all. This is why increasing numbers of cisgender people are also adopting this practice.

In so doing, they normalise the sharing of pronouns and show ally-ship towards gender-diverse people.

This is why I include my pronouns in my university email signature. I hope to show my students that I welcome them sharing their pronouns and that I respect their gender identities. I notice when others do the same.

People frequently misgendered for other reasons might also benefit from this practice. I knew an Italian student called Andrea whose eyes would glaze over as he repeatedly explained ‘’it’s Andraaaaaaaaya not Andrea’’.

I bet he’s jumped on this trend. Migrants may have names that are difficult for some people to assign to a gender. Abbreviated names are often ambiguously gendered (looking at you, Chris and Sam). And many names are fully gender-neutral, ranging from the mainstream (Casey and Jamie) to the creative (Zephyr and Phoenix).

Those who vigorously resist the trend to include pronouns in email signatures - presumably many of those instantly responding to my radio host – often say they don’t want people forcing them to do it.

No-one is forcing anyone. Some gender-diverse people themselves may not want to indicate their gender identity so widely, and signalling ally-ship only means something if cisgender people choose to do it voluntarily.

That said, the more people do it, the more it will be normalised.

A good group to start would be people in positions of authority who are responsible for providing inclusive services to people of all gender identities, especially if they have gender-neutral names themselves. So how about it, Dr Ashley?

Julia de Bres is a senior lecturer in Linguistics at Massey University.