hThere was a moment when we realized that our beloved Spanish language was telling us something like this: we are all men unless there is information that contradicts it. It wasn’t the same moment for everyone. But very recently in Argentina at least, inclusive language became the protagonist.
And it was the moment for many.
Inclusive language is a way to make privilege visible and that can be extremely uncomfortable. Yes, it’s uncomfortable.
If you are on the side of overcoming that discomfort and want to learn how to use it, I recommend this one. Yes, as you just realized, we are not going to guide you with that.
The debate about sexist and non-sexist language associated with the use of the generic masculine in language began in the 1970s (Braun, Sczesny, & Stahlberg, 2005). Yes, you read that right. It’s not something new. It’s not a fashion. It is a whole set of research and theoretical debates that has protagonists all over the world.
In 1972 Morgan wrote:
“If you start writing a book about man or conceiving a theory about man you cannot avoid using that word (man). You cannot avoid using the pronoun that replaces that word and you will use the pronoun “the” as a simple matter of linguistic convenience. But before you get halfway through that first chapter, a mental image of this developing creature will begin to form in your mind. It will be the image of a man and he will be the hero of the story: everyone and everything in the story will be related to him.” (Morgan, 1972, pp. 8-9)
What is the generic masculine? In the Spanish language – but this is not only true for Spanish – the masculine is the gender called not marked. This means that it is used to designate people of the male sex and all other people who are not men. The feminine is, on the other hand, the marked gender. This means that it is used to designate women only. So women had to learn to discriminate, from a young age, when they spoke to us (“All men are mortal”) and when not (“it’s not good for the man to be alone”).
It’s not something new. It’s not a fashion. It is a whole set of research and theoretical debates that has protagonists all over the world.
The debate about the influence of different languages on the thinking process is, as you might suspect, even older. Just to mention something aside, one of the most influential hypotheses in this sense was that of Whorf (1956), who postulated that it was possible to find cognitive differences between people who spoke languages with different grammatical structures. This hypothesis is inserted within the theory called linguistic determinism. While there is relatively little evidence in favor of linguistic determinism, there is quite a bit in favor of linguistic relativity: that is, the idea that language can reflect and preserve social structures and influence the way reality is perceived (Parks & Roberton, 1998).
The language is not innocuous.
Most common arguments against the use of inclusive language
1) It sounds strange: Some people report that it sounds so strange to them that they are somewhat embarrassed to use it. They are in favor, and may even praise the person who uses it, but they say they can’t get used to it.
2) It sounds bad: This is the argument of those who defend the Spanish language. “I can’t speak like that, it sounds horrible”, “the Spanish language is beautiful, we are ruining it by using the and”. You have to speak “correct” Spanish, is the argument. What perhaps they do not question is in the service of what is correct. That is to say: What are its effects?
3) It is very difficult: Another of the “I love that you use it but I get too confused” gang. They report doubts about where to put or not put the and and rejection of the misuse of the inclusive in nouns to which its application is not correct. No, it is not necessary that they eat on the table or sleep on the meat. These people draw attention to the extra cognitive effort involved in changing the way of writing and speaking and report that it could even interfere with understanding.
4) The generic masculine includes both men and women: This is the argument that was used, very recently, by our Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) (the xhe @the and). The RAE stated that “the masculine can encompass the feminine in certain contexts (…) and that there is no reason to think that the masculine gender excludes women in such situations” (La Nación Diario, 2018).
5) The way we speak is not so important: Language has no influence on gender stereotypes nor will it change things. The invisibility of women does not happen through language. It’s not going to change the underlying problem, so why bother.
If you are among the group of people who puts forward any of these arguments, the better. I’m glad you’re reading. My intention is not to get you to use it — although that would be great. It’s not mandatory. My intention is that you can respect those who use it, as someone who uses a useful tool for which you are not yet prepared, for whatever reasons.
Some things you should know before continuing
To understand and analyze how languages contribute to perpetuating gender bias, a distinction of languages according to three categories has been proposed: (a) genderless languages, (b) natural gender languages, and (c) grammatical gender languages (Stahlberg, Braun, Irmen, & Sczesny, 2007 ). Genderless languages, such as Finnish and Turkish, do not assign gender to either nouns or personal pronouns. Hard to imagine, right? Naturally gendered languages, such as English, do not have grammatical gender markers so most nouns and the linguistic forms associated with them (articles, adjectives, pronouns) can be used to refer to both men and women. In these languages, personal pronouns are almost the only source of gender expression. Finally, in languages with grammatical gender (such as Spanish, French, German and Italian), all nouns have gender (the sea, the house) and the entire statement that includes them carries the gender of that noun. In these languages the masculine pronoun is usually used with a generic function, that is, to refer to men and women. If you want to read more about this you can check out the paper by Sczesny and collaborators (2016), which has a detailed analysis of these characteristics and a summary table that is to applaud you. This distinction is important because many investigations that we will share here consisted of analyzing the differences in the impact of one or another type of language on the invisibilization of women in social representations.
When speakers refer to a person generically, it is assumed that it is a man unless there is an explicit sign to the contrary
Yes, they are experiencing discomfort due to almost indiscriminate use between sex and genderI’m on your side: The binary gender invades articles in scientific literature. Yesex and gender They are used interchangeably in most articles. Even when they are used with a specific meaning, each group of researchers defines them in a particular way and there is still no agreement on the matter. We usually find sex associated with biological characteristics. But not always. So I ask you to be patient. when they read gender either sex In this article, know that I am following the terminology that the authors chose. I didn’t find a better solution to this problem. If you are interested in this topic, you can read a little more in the manual by Saltzman (2006). Hird’s (2000) article may also be helpful.
Effects of using the generic masculine in language: It is important to clarify that the research takes as inclusive forms of language (gender-fair linguistic forms, in English) what they call neutralization wave feminization (Braun et al., 2005). Neutralization It involves using neutral grammatical forms that do not indicate gender (policeman vs police officer). This becomes extremely difficult in Spanish since, due to a matter of word construction, these forms are unlikely. Furthermore, Spanish is a language with grammatical gender and nouns have gender. This is why neutralization has been especially recommended for natural gender languages (Hellinger & Bußmann, 2001). The feminization, on the other hand, involves explicitly including the feminine, and the generic masculine is replaced by pairs of feminine-masculine words (doctor and doctor, traveler and traveler, estimated and estimated). Feminization also involves including both pronouns (he/the, they/them). This means that the research is not based on more recent uses of inclusive language, such as the use of @, the x wave and. However, they are extremely guiding. What they tell us is: the generic masculine needs to be replaced somehow. In this direction, research aimed at evaluating the consequences of the use of the indefinite pronoun “hen” in Sweden shows that this type of modifications, closer to the use of the and Yet the modification of personal pronounscould gradually be accepted (Gustafsson Sendén, Bäck, & Lindqvist, 2015).
If only science could agree…
When we think differently, we have the illusion that rigorous research can guide us a little. And we continue walking this path even though things don’t always turn out that way. Obstinacy? Hope? Craziness? By the way, the RAE does allow opening grammatical signs to be omitted. Curious, right?
The following is a summary list of research on the topic. Some refer to the effects of using the generic masculine, others to the effects of using some form of inclusive language.
There is an implicit agreement—made through language—that the prototypical ser humane is a man. Hamilton (1991) postulated the hypothesis that in the mental representations promoted by language the following equation occurs: “people = men” and demonstrated that speakers choose the word individual either person above the word man when they refer to a man and they choose the word women when they refer to a woman.
When inclusive language is used in the media, it results in more balanced mental representations regarding gender.
The converse also seems to be true. When speakers refer to a person In a generic way, it is assumed that he is a man unless there is an explicit sign to the contrary (Silveira, 1980).
Along the same lines, another investigation: the generic masculine mostly evokes mental representations of men and makes readers or listeners think more of men than women as exemplars of the category. people (Stahlberg et al., 2007).
The generic masculine does not represent men and women equally. Further…