Linguistic agency in discourse

The working hypothesis of this book posits that whenever linguistic features would index a nonbinary speaker’s gender identity in the standard variety, this speaker banks on alternatives, that is to say linguistic practices, to linguistically construct nonbinary identity. However, this assumption is subject to the person’s desire to express their nonbinary gender identity. This view is derived from the theoretical account that nonbinary speakers “assert agency over linguistic patterns” (Zimman 2019: 147), meaning individuals alone determine their gendered subjectivity, instead of relying on outward appearance, be it for the individual to match an imagined type of gender or for interactants who infer address forms and agreement patterns from the body.