A Diachronic Analysis of the Syntactic Evolution of Gender Neutral Pronouns in Modern Legal Discourse

Abstract

The growing popularity of inclusivity and equality has resulted in altering the use of the language of law significantly, most notably the use of gender-neutral pronouns. Conventionally, the use of law discourse was based on masculine generics like “he”, which had a tendency to ostracize or marginalize other forms of gender. This paper deals with the change of gender-specific to gender-neutral pronouns in legal writings with a particular emphasis on the syntactic and functional consequences of this change. The main purpose is to perform a diachronic study of the development of the gender-neutral pronouns over the years in the field of law, specifically the use of singular “they”. This study uses the corpus-based approach in which legal texts like statutes, case law, and contracts of two different periods are analyzed, including the period before 2000 and after 2000. The results demonstrate that there is definite growth of gender-neutral pronoun usage, as well as significant syntactic restructuring, such as subject-verb agreement and simplification of the sentence. The institutional factors, including the rules of drafting the legislation and policy reforms, contribute to this development considerably. The paper concludes that pronoun integration (gender neutral) is not only a way of making the text more inclusive, but also more comprehensible, which, to a certain degree, has positive consequences, such as on the legal texts of today and legitimization of the fair use of language.