Gender-neutral Nominative Personal Pronouns in Korean and British-American Textbooks

This study aimed to examine the gender-neutral tendency of personal pronouns used in Korean EFL and British-American ESL textbooks. The research especially focused on nominative pronouns (he, she, they, and he or she) to explore personal pronouns used in gender-neutral situations. The data were analyzed using Antconc, a corpus analysis program. The study found that all four textbooks did not deviate significantly from prescriptive grammar of personal pronouns and the pronoun “he” was still used a lot in gender-neutral sentences. However, British-American textbooks showed a slightly more gender-neutral tendency than Korean ones.