Pronoun activism and the power of animacy

Résumé En

This chapter considers how some pronoun uses are challenged by activists because they convey controversial world views relating to animacy. Animacy should be understood not just as a distinction between animates and inanimates, but as a scale filtered by human cognition, with humans at the top, then animals and inanimates. It finds a parallel in a linguistic Animacy Hierarchy that underlies some categories of grammar, such as gender. The focus of the chapter is on pronominal gender in English, which is referential and partly based on animacy. It considers three case studies: animal rights campaigners and ecolinguists, some of whom reject the use of it for animals; pro-lifers, who view the fetus as an unborn child and as such, ban it; and feminists, who advocate the use of it instead of she in references to ships, hurricanes and the like. Beyond a close look at arguments and world views, the aim of the chapter is to explore the relationship between grammar, the extralinguistic world and speakers, and to see what a change in uses entails for a grammatical word such as a personal pronoun.