Abstract
Using indexicality to study gender identity is one of the staples in Sociolinguistics ever since Bucholtz's and Hall's highly influential paper presenting a framework for studying identity as a product of interaction (Bucholtz & Hall,
2005). Since then, attention was paid to transgender people's identity creation, while other gender non-conforming identities remain mostly outside of the main focus. Although personal pronouns are just one type of indexicals, they are an important part of gender identity of non-binary people. Many of them seek out and use gender-neutral pronouns that better reflect their gender. In English, such pronouns can be singular they/ them. However, not many languages are this flexible, which can bring complications to non-binary people, who are not native English speakers. This paper thus examines gender identity creation, personal pronouns and their usage by non-binary individuals. This topic was part of my larger ethnographic thesis project on non-binary users of the blogging website Tumblr. By conducting semi-structured interviews, I aimed to find out: a) The ways non-binary people construct gender identities using personal pronouns, b) how interactions in the real world, where they are forced to use more gendered languages, influence it, and c) how it changes after they log onto the English-speaking website Tumblr. While some participants were comfortable using pronouns corresponding to the gender assigned at birth, most of them preferred using gender-neutral pronouns which allow more nuanced expression of gender without connections to one of the binary genders. However, often it was not possible to achieve in most language. Participants were able to use the English neutral pronouns only during communication on the website, whereas in real life, they were forced to use pronouns corresponding to their assigned gender. Lastly, some choose binary pronouns closer to their gender expression. Gender construction was then vastly dependent on the context of the interaction, mainly on four factors:
1. are all participants of the conversation aware of person gender and pronouns,
2. do they accept and acknowledge them,
3. place of the conversation, and
4. language used.