I figured this would be a nice place to post my question since there are students here who have/are taking AP exams - specifically, one that is related to English.
So, straight to the point:
When I’m writing an essay about a poem during the AP exam, and I’m not sure if the speaker (of the poem) is a male or a female, is it safe to just refer to the speaker as"he", since it’s technically a gender-neutral pronoun? I don’t want to continuously say “the speaker” since it makes it sound redundant…
I think the singular they might be better, but I’m not 100% sure.
I’ve never encountered a prompt that is ambiguous like that, but I’m sure that’s not what they’re grading you on. As long as you keep it consistent throughout you’ll be fine.
@sammo3
Ah, that’s not exactly a prompt. The actual prompt just asks to interpret the speakers’ own reflection on his surroundings (it’s actually an old one that my teacher made my class do for practice).
Anyways, thanks for the responses guys.
“He” is used as a gender-neutral pronoun because people used to believe that “she” was some sort of deviation from the default. It’s not a big deal, but I don’t like it.
We’ve been using “they” as a gender-neutral pronoun for a long time, and IMO it’s perfectly acceptable as long as you don’t start saying “themself.”
You could also use “he” if the author is a man and “she” if the author is a woman. The speaker and the author are often different people, but in an ambiguous poem it won’t be unreasonable to assume they have the same gender.