Taking 'TA' beyond the binary: In search of multimodal gender-inclusive pronouns in Chinese

Few people are aware that Chinese has only had a gender-distinguished third-person
pronoun system for a century (Huang 2009). Even now, the gender distinction of third-person
pronouns is apparent only in written form: 他 ‘he’, 她 ‘she’ and 它 ‘it’ are all pronounced
tā in Mandarin. In recent years, a number of gender-neutral or gender-inclusive pronouns,
such as ‘TA’ and「⿰无也」, have been proposed. Yet little is known about the prevalence
and perception of these pronouns. In this paper, I examine how third-person pronoun use
is changing in contemporary China and place these developments in historical perspective.
Drawing on survey data and Chinese sources, I sketch the history of the Chinese pronoun
system, follow waves of debate about gendered characters, and explore how pronouns are
currently used by queer Chinese speakers. I argue that the emergence of gender-neutral/
gender-inclusive pronouns, particularly ‘TA’, shows growing recognition of the utility of
gender-neutral references, and accordingly, an effort to extend this beyond spoken Mandarin
to other modes of communication. This is consistent with the narrative of Chinese pronoun
use over the last century, with pronoun expression continuing to be shaped by similar
multimodal and multilingual factors that influenced the introduction of 她.