Over the past few decades, language has become an important battleground in the quest for gender equality. At the centre of the debate is the centuries-old norm of using masculine generics to refer to people of unknown gender or groups of mixed gender. This has consistently been found to evoke male-biased mental representations when compared to gender-neutral and feminine forms, and it is argued that the ensuing underrepresentation of women and non-binary people in language helps perpetuate existing gender inequalities (Gygax et al. 2021).
However, attempts to make language more inclusive are often met with criticism. This is particularly the case in France, where the emergence of a so-called langage inclusif has sparked a lively polemic. Part of the explanation lies in the fact that French is a grammatically gendered language, which means that gender is virtually omnipresent and thus difficult to circumvent without innovative approaches. As a result, inclusive language is often denounced as useless, ugly, complicated, and as an obstruction to the use, processing, and acquisition of the language – both for foreign learners and native speakers. These arguments have emerged, among other places, in my own research on attitudes towards inclusive French (Witthøft 2022), in the open letters of l'Académie française (2017; 2021), and in the government's decision to forbid the most controversial inclusive forms in French schools (Ministère de l'éducation nationale 2021). However, these claims have no empirical foundation.
In light of the ever-increasing focus on diversity and inclusivity in educational contexts and the apparent spread of inclusive French, I will discuss these claims with particular attention to its place in the foreign language classroom.
Literature
ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE. 2017. "Déclaration de l'Académie française sur l'écriture dite 'inclusive'". https://www.academie-francaise.fr/actualites/declaration-de-lacademie-francaise-sur-lecriture-dite-inclusive.
ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE. 2021. "Lettre ouverte sur l'écriture inclusive". https://www.academie-francaise.fr/actualites/lettre-ouverte-sur-lecriture-inclusive.
GYGAX, Pascal, Sayata Sako, Anton Öttl et Ute Gabriel. 2021. "The masculine form in grammatically gendered languages and its multiple interpretations: a challenge for our cognitive system." Language Sciences 83: article 9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2020. 101328.
MINISTÈRE DE L'ÉDUCATION NATIONALE. 2021. "Règles de féminisation dans les actes administratifs du ministère de l'Éducation nationale, de la Jeunesse et des Sports et les pratiques d'enseignement." Bulletin officiel n° 18 du 6 mai 2021. https://www.education.gouv.fr/bo/21/Hebdo18/MENB2114203C.htm.
WITTHØFT, Nicolai. 2022. "Une langue pour tous : le statut du langage inclusif parmi les publics français et québécois." Synergies Pays Scandinaves 16-17 (in press).
