The Use of Animate Pronouns for Inanimate Referents in English: a Questionnaire-based Analysis

The use of animate pronouns to refer to inanimate objects has been regarded by previous research as a trait of dialectal varieties of English (e.g. Somerset dialect, Newfoundland Vernacular English, Tasmanian English). It having become a common phenomenon in the speech of young native speakers on social media, further investigation would contribute to the study of recent language variation in the pronominal system of English. This dissertation aims at providing a brief account of the extant literature on the phenomenon and its potential motivations. It proceeds with providing an illustrative corpus of examples from social media (Instagram and YouTube) and conducting a questionnaire-based study aimed at investigating the exposure (and perception) of a sample of native speakers of English to the linguistic phenomenon under analysis. The main hypothesis is that the phenomenon would be recognised by young native people more than older ones, probably attributed to dialectal contexts and/or non-native speakers, with social media influencing its suspected superregional spread. While some hypotheses were confirmed, the results showed that there seem to be an age group (ranging from 25 to 50) and two English varieties, British and American English, that consider the phenomenon most likely to occur. Informal and conversational contexts, rather than dialectal, were identified as the most likely environments, with non-native speakers as the most likely type. This dissertation highlights the need to further investigate the correlation between the phenomenon and social media, exploring whether the latter represent a determining factor or a mere reflection of an ongoing linguistic trend.