Deborah Cameron - The Pronoun Is Political Summary

In Deborah Cameron's post about Anne Liston, a gender-nonconforming entrepreneur, she discusses the importance of pronouns role they play society, more specifically in the contemporary politics of gender identity. In the article, the writer expresses that transgender and genderqueer activists are not the only people to make pronouns a political issue, she uses past evidence from the 18th century for example to establish other individual's perspective on this topic, feminists for example. The post also includes quotes from several linguist's, Robin Lakoff for example, who argued that feminists should focus on other targets as their focus on pronouns was misguided. The range of different views and opinions on pronouns, 'open' word classes; such as nouns, adjectives and verbs that contain a large number of items and have the possibility to add new ones and 'closed' word classes, which are pronouns like articles and prepositions that contain a finite set of items which alternate in predictable ways, show how language can be controversial as many different individuals, linguists in particular and as proven throughout history, have varied meanings and representations for pronouns and how they have changed society throughout time.