Spivak pronoun

The Spivak pronouns 'e/em/eir' are a set of gender-neutral pronouns in English promoted on the virtual community ''LambdaMOO'' based on pronouns used in a book by American mathematician Michael Spivak. Though not in widespread use, they have been employed in writing for gender-neutral language by those who wish to avoid the standard terms ''he'', ''she'', or singular ''they''.

History

The precise history of the Spivak pronouns is unclear, since they appear to have been independently created multiple times.

The first recorded use of the pronouns was in a January 1890 editorial by James Rogers, who derives ''e'', ''es'', and ''em'' from ''he'' and ''them'' in response to the proposed ''thon''.Rogers, James "That Impersonal Pronoun." Editorial. Comp. William Henry Hills '' The Writer'' Boston. Jan. 1890, 4th ed.: 12-13. ''Google Books''. Google. Web. Accessed 31 July 2014

Coincidentally, Scottish author David Lindsay (novelist), David Lindsay used the similar forms ''ae'' and ''aer'' in his novel '' A Voyage to Arcturus'', to refer to non-terrestrial beings "unmistakably of a third positive sex".

In 1975, Christine M. Elverson of Skokie, Illinois, won a contest by the Chicago Association of Business Communicators to find replacements for "she and he", "him and her", and "his and hers". Her pronouns ''ey'', ''em'', and ''eir'' were formed by dropping the "th" from ''they'', ''them'', and ''their''.Scanned clipping from , published in (See 'em.) The article that first reported the pronouns treated them as something of a joke, concluding with the line, "A contestant from California entered the word 'uh' because 'if it isn't a he or a she, it's uh, something else.' So much of eir humor."Black, Judie. "Ey Has a Word for It." ''Chicago Tribune'' 23 Aug. 1975, sec. 1: 12.

Writing in 1977, poet, playwright, and linguist Lillian Carlton submitted a letter to the journal '' American Speech'' reporting (and arguing against) the invention by "an American professor" (likely Donald MacKay Citing Donald G. MacKay, "Birth of a Word," manuscript, Department of Psychology, University of California at Los Angeles. However, if MacKay ever wrote this manuscript, it does not appear on his CV or anywhere else easily discernable.) of pronouns based on "the long sound of the vowel e i". Although her primary argument against the proposed word is her assertion that English "already asa perfectly good... word that refers to either sex", namely "one", she also raises the observations that "spoken fast, it comes uncomfortably close to the illiterate hisself... urthermore ''ee'' sounds too much like ''he'' and would therefore be confusing." Similar arguments, along with the desire to distance themselves from the male-centric singular ''he'' and derivatives, are still a primary factor in the proliferation of constructed pronouns.

Also in 1977, Jeffery J. Smith, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Stanford University, writing under the pen name "Tintajl jefry", proposed "Em" as "a personal noun-pronoun which in itself gives no indication of sex, age, or number, though these may be shown by its context."jefry ic. Tintajl. "Una: The Emerging Language of the World". (Em Institute 1997), pp. 1-4., cited in Lockheed, Marlaine E. ''Curriculum and Research for Equity: A Training Manual for Promoting Sex Equity in the Classroom.'' Rep. no. Classroom Guide. Washington, DC.: Women's Educational Equity Act Program (ED), 1982. pp. 110-11

/ref> He proposes a vast number of possible uses for "em", including but not limited to the replacement of "the formal Dear, because em is a thou word, a term of respect for all people, bar none... Dear Em Doe is redundant. Em Doe is enough, and, since it is brief; it makes room for given names: Em John Doe, Em Mary and John Doe, or, better, Em Doe John, Em Doe John and Mary."

The May 1980 issue of ''American Psychologist'' reported on another study by MacKay, testing rates at which subjects miscomprehended the gender of a subject in textbook paragraphs when written with ''he'' meaning ''he or she'' compared with three epicene pronoun sets: ''E'', ''E'', ''Es'', ''Eself''; ''e'', ''e'', ''es'', ''eself''; and ''tey'', ''tem'', ''ter'', ''temself''.

In 1983, mathematician Michael Spivak wrote the AMS-TeX manual ''The Joy of TEX: A Gourmet Guide to Typesetting with the AMS-TEX Macro Package '' (1986) using ''E'', ''Em'', and ''Eir''. His set was similar to Elverson's, but capitalized like one of MacKay's sets.

In May 1991, a MOO programmer, Roger Crew, added "spivak" as a gender setting for players on LambdaMOO, causing the game to refer to such players with the pronouns ''e'', ''em'', ''eir'', ''eirs'', ''emself''. The setting was added along with several other "fake genders" in order to test changes to the software's pronoun code, and was left in place as a novelty. To Crew's surprise, the Spivak setting caught on among the game's players, while the other gender settings were mostly ignored.

Other writers applied Elverson's original "th"-dropping rule and revived ''ey'', such as Eric Klein in his legal code for a planned micronation called Oceania. John Williams's ''Gender-neutral Pronoun FAQ'' (2004) promoted the original Elverson set (via Klein) as preferable to other major contenders popular on Usenet (singular ''they'', ''sie''/''hir''/''hir''/''hirs''/''hirself'', and ''zie''/''zir''/''zir''/''zirs''/''zirself'').

Variations

Three variants of the Spivak pronouns are in use, Rogers (1890), Elverson (1975), and LambdaMOO (1991), highlighted in the declension table below. The pronoun set used by Lindsay (1920) is also in use, although generally not in the context of Spivak pronouns.

The original ''ey'' has been argued to be preferable to ''e'', because the latter would be pronounced the same as ''he'' in those contexts where ''he, him, his'' loses its h sound.

Usage

Spivak is one of the allowable genders on many multi-user dungeons (MUDs) and MOOs (MUD object-oriented). Others might include some selection of: masculine, feminine, neuter, either, both, " splat", plural, egotistical, royal, and second. The selected gender determines how the game engine refers to a player.

On LambdaMOO, they became standard practice for help texts ("The user may choose any description e likes"), referring to people of unknown gender ("Who was that guest yesterday, eir typing was terrible"), referring to people whose gender was known but without disclosing it ("Yes I've met Squiggle. E was nice."), or of course characters declaring themselves to be of gender Spivak. Since 2000 this usage has been declining.

Nomic games, especially on the Internet, often use Spivak pronouns in their rulesets, as a way to refer to indefinite players.

Spivak pronouns and gender in virtual communities

In online anonymous situations, Spivak and other gender neutral pronouns can be motivated by avoiding gendered speech that would make divisions in the social group more likely and the group possibly less productive or enjoyable. This contact with genderless pronouns in virtual communities is sometimes a person's first experience and experimentation with presenting their gender in a genderqueer or transgender manner.

Publications employing Spivak pronouns

Elverson 1975 set (ey, em, eir)

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"Spivak" 1991 set (e, em, eir)

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* the Orion's Arm universe
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See also

* Generic antecedents
* Ri (pronoun), Esperanto
* Elle (Spanish pronoun)
* Hen (pronoun), Swedish
* Iel (pronoun), French
* Elu (Portuguese pronoun)
* Gender-neutral pronouns
* Neopronoun

Notes

References

External links

Gender-neutral pronoun FAQ on Aetherlumina.com

{{English gender-neutral pronouns

English pronouns