All Journals

Language Teaching Research Quarterly

European Journal of Studies in Management and Business

International Journal of Behavior Studies in Organizations

Studies in Educational Management

New Challenges in Accounting and Finance

Language Testing in Focus: An International Journal

Marketing and Branding Research

Individual Differences in Language Education: An International Journal 

Feedback Research in Second Language 

Management Issues in Healthcare System

Language Teacher Education Research

Artificial Intelligence Knowledge Development

With&nbsp;the increasing attempts to use gender-fair language, different studies have&nbsp;investigated this issue from different viewpoints. To find an epicene pronoun&nbsp;used as a third-person singular, some research has been conducted investigating&nbsp;them in various contexts, yet few studies have focused on cultural differences.&nbsp;Since how to use language differs among cultures, this study aims to&nbsp;investigate and compare the use of epicene pronouns (he, she, he/she, and&nbsp;singular they) among Iranian and Polish Non-Native Speakers (NNSs) of&nbsp;English with different cultures, social backgrounds, and L1s (in terms&nbsp;of gender markedness; Iran with a genderless-grammar language, and Poland with&nbsp;a grammatical-gender language). A survey containing sentences and questions was&nbsp;given to 64 university learners in 4 contexts (indefinite noun, feminine,&nbsp;masculine, and neutral connotations) to choose the most suitable pronouns while&nbsp;exploring the reasons for choices followed by the source of learning. The&nbsp;results revealed that singular they was the highest deployed pronoun in&nbsp;all four contexts, with no significant difference between Iranian and Polish&nbsp;learners. Furthermore, gender neutrality was mentioned most as the main reason for their selection of&nbsp;choices. Finally, roughly half the Polish students and about a third of Iranian&nbsp;participants had already heard about singular they, with private&nbsp;institutions and schools were respectively mentioned as their main sources of this&nbsp;knowledge.

Investigating the Use of Singular ‘they’ across Two Social Contexts: A Comparative Study of Iranian and Polish EFL Students

Original Research 

ltrq.2021.24.04.xml