By Sarah Wang | Staff Writer
The Interactive Media and Language Center hosted a gallery walk on Oct. 19 in Draper 355, showcasing the diverse pronouns found in different languages across the globe.
International Pronouns Day is celebrated on the third Wednesday of October. The day seeks to normalize respecting, sharing and educating about personal pronouns, according to the official organizer’s website.
Throughout the exhibit, attendees walked around to learn about and reflect on international pronouns. Ten languages were featured, including Kiswahili, Portuguese, German, Japanese, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Italian and Arabic. Every poster on display provided an introduction to the language itself, in addition to sharing its own take on pronouns.
“Global languages take very different and often fascinating approaches to articulating personal pronouns,” Dr. Jake Abell, French lecturer, said.
Romance languages typically divide all pronouns, nouns and adjectives into masculine and feminine genders, according to Abell. Other languages, such as Arabic, Swahili and Japanese, have remarkably different strategies for representing individual identity through pronouns.
“We wanted to emphasize this diversity through a cross-cultural display of 10 languages represented in the Modern Languages and Cultures (MLC) Department,” Abell said.
Margaret Welch, technology and Korean language assistant, said the Interactive Media and Language Center presented the exhibit as an annual event to celebrate International Pronouns Day.
“It’s an opportunity for people to be exposed and more educated about pronouns,” Welch said. “It’s also a good opportunity for people to gather and experience [the exhibit] together.”
Abell said an emphasis was placed on gender-neutrality in the exhibit by the diversity, equity and inclusion committee of the Interactive Media and Language Center.
“For several modern languages, gender-neutral and non-binary pronouns exist or are in the process of being developed,” Abell said. “In other languages, such pronouns are not yet well-documented, and this is unfortunately often due to sociocultural dynamics.”
The committee collectively planned the event to give visitors a diverse introduction to non-binary and gender-neutral pronouns across global languages, according to Abell.
“I think [the exhibit] is really cool because different cultures have different pronouns,” Jacksonville freshman Klarissa Ramos said. “And the way they put the exhibit to see those differences is also cool.”
Ramos said the exhibit showed her which pronouns multiple cultures would use for “he,” “she,” “they” and non-binary people.
“This exhibit makes me more educated on different cultures and pronouns — and to specifically pay more attention to how they’re respected in different languages,” Ramos said.
Abell said the exhibit reflected the Interactive Media and Language Center’s mission: gaining insight into different worldviews by learning other languages.
“Through this gallery, we hoped to highlight the evolving ways that language speakers all over the world are confronting representation of gender through such a basic category of human speech,” Abell said.
