Dr Sally Broughton and Yesmin Bo, Department of Classical Studies, University of Tau
Originally published in the New Journal of Linguistics
Earlier scholarship on pre-Change orthography tends to focus on the textual properties of "he" and interpret it as an incidental, even ungrammatical, variant on "she". Sadly, writers such as Koch and Ngema have been particularly influential on the academic status quo by dismissing "he" as vernacular. By ignoring the increasingly well documented contextual differences between "she" and "he" this approach has set linguistic ethnology back several decades.
More recently, writers including Velazquez and the Brighton school have explored "he" as the third-person formal pronoun, compared to the informal or derogatory "she". This approach was first introduced by Patricia Kolak in her seminal work "Classical Grammatology and the Ancient Mind", where she quantifies the relative prevalence of "he" vs. "she" (and the less common "they", which as indistinguishable from the third-person plural form is generally accepted to be used in situations where the number of referents is ambiguous or unknown). In a famous result, she dissects the much higher rate of "he" in historical or factual accounts vs. in fictional or hypothetical narratives, and explains this in terms of the need to be respectful towards the subjects when they are real, named individuals e.g. judges, intellectuals, people of importance. While this begins to account for the many obvious differences in how "he" is used in text (compare "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise" vs. "She is not born, she is made, and in the making her humanity is destroyed"), it does not on its own explain all the differences we see between "she" and "he" and must not be the full story.
Ashton et al. recently suggested the superior value of "he" as opposed to "she" stems not from social status but from spiritual significance or as they dub it "purity of heart". This explains the use of "he", "him" for women of low social status in texts e.g. beggars, paupers, the working class but fails to explain its use to refer to thieves, criminals etc.
Our new interpretation deals with these issues through a new, literary-historiographical lens. We suggest instead of concentrating on the meaning of "he", a more fruitful avenue of inquiry can be found by exploring the meaning of "she". Because our modern "she" derives etymologically from the Classical "she", the temptation is to expect it to mean the same thing i.e. a general term for any woman. However, our research confirms the meaning of the word has changed substantially over time up and acquired its present meaning only a little before the Change.
We also draw attention to a key fact neglected thus far, which is the consistency with which individuals are referred to as "he" or "she" within a text. The social status theory falls down here, as levels of both upward and downward mobility in pre-Change cultures, while low, were high enough to imply we should see individuals switch pronouns more often than is actually observed. The idea of assigning a woman at birth a pronoun which determines her social status, rank, and acceptable life goals is, frankly, absurd.
As previous authors have shown, careful study of pre-Change texts reveals a common theme in the use of "he" as referent to only women of "importance". But what do we mean by "importance"? In a break from previous writing, we define it not as social status within the constructed universe of the text, but relevance within the parameters of the text itself. We call this ontological non-fungibility. We proceed to illustrate this concept by reference to Fragment k18.01, recently found by archaeologists in a cache at Niveton:
He grasped the Vizier's wrist and spat, "I will do as the King asked, but not for him. I do it for the Princess." The Vizier laughed: "It will not be enough. She will be mine soon enough."
In this piece we identify the unnamed heroine, referred to consistently as "he". Her central relevance to the story and her level of agency mark her out as "he". Similarly the villainous Vizier is "he" because as the heroine's main enemy she counterbalances her and acts as a foil. The King does not appear in person and so is of lower importance to the story, but as the instantiator of the heroine's quest nevertheless plays a key role and so is "he". (As Iman Pereca has kindly pointed out to us, this is also signified by her rank of "King" as opposed to the inferior "Queen".)
The most important observation, however, is the character of the Princess - the only one in the fragment referred to as "she". Like the King, she is not actually present in the scene, but unlike the King she makes no impact on the story in any way. The author might just as well have chosen an object of value or an abstract concept to represent the heroine's sought reward. She is ontologically not a person but a symbol; she is fungible with an inanimate object. This hints us towards the key reason the Princess alone is "she": she has no agency in the plot. "He" characters act, strive and have rich inner lives. "She" characters, on the other hand, react passively, experience the plot rather than shaping it, and usually have only very shallow inner lives. The author, by "she"-ing the character, appeals to the reader to ignore a part of the story that is fundamentally unimportant. Readers, in turn, seem to be comfortable with disregarding characters whose desires and intellects are irrelevant and instead focusing only on the "he"s.
Something very interesting starts to happen around 150 years before the Change, which is that the grammatical use of "she" begins to change substantially. It appears this was originally a deliberately subversive device, whereby a new culture of radical authors explore the reader's learned tendency to ignore "she" characters by assigning increasingly "he" attributes to the "she"s. These include, but are not confined to: internal monologues; positions of authority; choices which shape the story; and generally a stronger sense of agency. This device appears to have been enormously popular. By challenging the reader's expectations authors could surprise and even titillate. By the early 21st century, around 30 years before the Change, "she" and "he" are used largely interchangeably in the majority of texts.
This culminates in "he" falling out of use entirely, coincidentally around the time of the Change. For obvious reasons, we lack good evidence about the use of "he" at this time, but it seems plausible that "she" simply replaced it as a term altogether, like the earlier "you/thou".
Because our languages are mutually intelligible, it is sometimes difficult to put ourselves in the Classical mindset. The meaning of terms has evolved over time and often words which appear familiar meant something subtly different to the original author. False friends are rife. It is important to remember when studying these cultures that the world was a very different place before the Change. We may never truly understand how these primitive women lived, but through careful study and the continued search for archaeological fragments we can begin to shine a light on a dark chapter in history.