THE LINGUISTIC AND SOCIAL FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE THE ACCEPTABILITY OF THE SINGULAR THEY IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Despite having been used as a third-person singular pronoun for centuries, the singular they has found its way to the centre of linguistic controversy time and time again. While initially used almost exclusively with generic antecedents, it is now being increasingly used with specific antecedents, in conjunction with rising awareness of nonbinary gender identities. While the singular they has received much scholarly attention in the West, its use and English speakers’ perceptions towards it have not been explored as much in non Western contexts. Therefore, in this thesis, I explore the linguistic and social factors that influence the acceptability of the singular they in Singapore. This is achieved via an online questionnaire, which is used to glean participants’ grammaticality judgements of singular they as it is used in various contexts and with different types of antecedents. I first provide a sufficiently comprehensive theoretical background to contextualise the study. I then analyse participants’ responses and discover that linguistic factors, such as the definiteness of the singular they’s antecedent, and social factors, such as age and gender, are indeed reliable indicators to gauge the acceptability of the singular they in the Singaporean context.