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Is It OK? The Use of the English Neuter Pronoun It to Refer to Children

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aut.relation.journalChildhood
aut.relation.volumeOnlineFirst
dc.contributor.authorHanna, Kirsten
dc.date.accessioned2025-01-30T00:10:07Z
dc.date.available2025-01-30T00:10:07Z
dc.date.issued2024-12-11
dc.description.abstractIf it is dehumanising to refer to an adult with it, why is it applied happily to their children? The use of the neuter pronoun it to refer to children is an understudied aspect of English pronoun use. This paper explores this usage in the Aotearoa/NZ news media. It shows that the pronoun is used in more contexts than the literature suggests and there may be diverse motivations for its adoption. Irrespective of speaker intentions, this usage may contribute to deficit views of children, portraying them as lesser humans through association with the non-human entities to which it typically refers.
dc.identifier.citationChildhood, ISSN: 0907-5682 (Print); 1461-7013 (Online), SAGE Publications, OnlineFirst. doi: 10.1177/09075682241289193
dc.identifier.doi10.1177/09075682241289193
dc.identifier.issn0907-5682
dc.identifier.issn1461-7013
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10292/18565
dc.languageen
dc.publisherSAGE Publications
dc.relation.urihttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09075682241289193
dc.rights© The Author(s) 2024. Creative Commons License (CC BY 4.0). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the Sage and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
dc.rights.accessrightsOpenAccess
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subject39 Education
dc.subject50 Philosophy and Religious Studies
dc.subject44 Human Society
dc.subjectPediatric
dc.subject13 Education
dc.subject16 Studies in Human Society
dc.subject22 Philosophy and Religious Studies
dc.subjectSocial Work
dc.subject39 Education
dc.subject44 Human society
dc.subject50 Philosophy and religious studies
dc.titleIs It OK? The Use of the English Neuter Pronoun It to Refer to Children
dc.typeJournal Article
pubs.elements-id581001

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