Beyond xier: An Exploration of German Nonbinary Pronoun Usage and Discourse on Twitter

Neopronouns are new pronouns created to address perceived gaps in the standard pronoun system. In the German language, neopronouns have neither stabilized around norms of usage nor has any singular neopronoun risen to prominence over others. However, many sources available to educators and researchers in a US context have foregrounded the neopronoun xier based on a small number of resources. To address this possible misrepresentation in the current pedagogical and linguistic literature, we conducted a study on nonbinary pronoun usage by German speakers on Twitter. Our findings indicate several neopronouns in use, with they, xier, dey, and sier being the most frequent. Further analysis indicated that these pronouns are often used in different ways by different speakers. These results document the unstable nature of neopronouns in the German-speaking world and provide a foundation for future neopronoun research.