Welcome to the LRB podcast. If you subscribe to the LRB, you can get the first 12 issues for just £12. To find out more, go to lrb.me forward slash listen. That's lrb.m e forward slash listen.

Hello and welcome to the London Review of Books podcast. My name is Thomas Jones and today

I'm talking to Amir Shrindivasin, who's written a piece in the current issue of the LLB about pronouns.

It's a review of a book by Dennis Barron called What's Your Pronown Beyond He and She?

An account of the search for what Baron, a professor of English and linguistics

at the University of Illinois, calls the missing word, a third person, singular, gender-neutral

pronoun. Amir's piece covers the history of that search, which has been going on for longer

than you might think, should I say than one might think, and the resurgence of the pronoun

debate in the last 20 years.

English pronouns are in their nature political, Amirites.

Their usage has historically been governed and is in some ways governed still by norms that are produced by hierarchies of power.

Hello, Amir, and thank you for joining me.

Thanks, Tom.

One thing to say before we begin or as we begin

is that there are two different, the related questions here. One's about the pronouns we use

to refer to a subject who could be either male or female and the other is about finding a word

or a set of words with which to reflect, as you put it, a gender identity that exists beyond

or across the male-female binary.

Is that the right distinction?

Yeah, I think that is a really useful distinction when thinking about the supposed missing word.

And so maybe a little grammar lesson up top might be helpful just to get a firmer grip on what that distinction is,

if you don't mind.

...