There are two main strategies to counteract gender biases in language: neutralization (using gender-unmarked forms such as “l’enfant” in French) or re-feminization (contracted double forms such as “un·e enfant”). Here, we explored the relative efficiency of these strategies. (3/7)
@linguistics #EcritureInclusive #GenderFair #GenderNeutral

We employed a sentence evaluation paradigm, where the participants had to decide whether a second sentence starting with a gendered personal pronoun (“il” or “elle”) was a sensible continuation of the first sentence written in a gender-fair form, either a gender-unmarked form or a contracted double form. (4/7)

The findings indicated that gender-unmarked forms do not fully neutralize the masculine bias. For example, “l’enfant” has no fixed grammatical gender, still our participants mostly interpreted it as “male child”. This is probably because, in everyday language, gender-unmarked forms are often used as generic masculine terms (“Ils ont eu un enfant”) or carry underlying masculine stereotypes (e.g. “citizen” in George Bush’s “We cannot tolerate attacks on the wife of an American citizen”). (5/7) #EcritureInclusive #GenderFair #GenderNeutral #GenderFairLanguage

On the other hand contracted double forms (“un·e enfant”) are more effective in promoting gender balance, as they explicitely reintroduce grammatical gender markers associated with the feminine gender. (6/7)

The publication of this article is remarkably timely, given that the French National Assembly is currently slated to examine a bill put forth by the far-right party, aimed at banning the use of “inclusive writing” (in fact mid-dots) from all administrative documents…https://blogs.mediapart.fr/eliane-vien (7/7) @MarCandea @laelia_ve