Why "They" Feels Wrong to You (And Why That Might Change)
Based on my recent book chapter, “Language Socialization and Stability in Adulthood: Learning and Unlearning Gender and Sexual Normativity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language Socialization.
A few summers ago in Tanga, Tanzania, a young Muslim woman at my field site told me she didn’t consider me a Muslim because I disagreed with her about whether Islam requires women to keep their hair long. I ended our conversation and walked away angry. Later, she texted me: “I feel like I have annoyed you” (“Nahisi kama nimekuudhi.”)
Our exchange stuck with me because it illustrates something that language socialization researchers often overlook: adults socialize one another all the time, and the process runs in multiple directions. She was trying to socialize me into her understanding of Islamic femininity. I was—by walking away and later explaining that jokes can hurt—socializing her into something different: the recognition that comments on someone’s religiosity are unwelcome.
Most research on language socialization focuses on children. We assume kids learn how to talk, what to say, who they should be—and then, somewhere around adulthood, that process stops. But it doesn’t. Adults continue learning new ways of speaking throughout our lives: when we enter workplaces, join religious communities, become parents, or navigate shifting cultural norms around gender and sexuality.
Consider the current debates around pronouns. If you’re over 40 and cisgender, you were probably socialized into a world where singular “they” sounded ungrammatical. Now someone asks you to use it. That discomfort you feel? That’s the friction of adult re-socialization—the gap between what your earlier language learning naturalized and what new communities of practice expect.
What the research shows:
Adults change their language more than we assume—especially upwardly mobile speakers and those in language-intensive professions
Media (including social media and workplace trainings) serves as a major vehicle for adult language socialization
Gender and sexuality are sites where adult socialization becomes visible precisely because norms are shifting
Whether socialization “works” depends partly on political orientation, age, and education—but also on repeated exposure and community investment
In my fieldwork with nonconformist Muslims in North America, I observed adults actively socializing one another into inclusive practices. At one Friday prayer, a congregant named Salma was asked to lead prayers under the assumption that they were a woman. When Salma clarified, “I’m not a woman—I’m gender nonconforming,” what followed was real-time collective problem-solving: How do we describe our practice of non-male-led prayer in a way that includes nonbinary people?
The solution they reached: “people who aren’t men.” One participant cheered, “Tear up the tradition! ... Because that’s what we need. They were policing masculinity, and drawing this fence around masculinity, and that’s the fence we need to destroy.”
Language socialization isn’t just about children learning to talk. It’s about how communities maintain norms and how they change them. When someone corrects your pronoun use, when a workplace training explains what “cisgender” means, when you read an article arguing you should share your pronouns in email signatures—these are all invitations into adult language socialization.
Some people resist. That’s the thing about adult socialization: we have choice, agency, and the capacity to say no. But we also have the capacity to say yes, and to socialize others in turn.
After my exchange with the young woman in Tanga, another woman who had witnessed our conversation told me she had also learned from it. Our writing also socializes others. So does our speaking—and our refusal to speak.
If you’d like a copy of my book chapter, please reach out via ResearchGate.