Écriture inclusive
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In English, singular personal pronouns are almost the only residue of morphological gender. But in many languages this is a much bigger problem, with gender agreement in adjectives, gendered forms of most nouns, and so on. A few years ago, French proponents of "écriture inclusive" ("inclusive writing") proposed a novel use of an otherwise little-used character, the "middle dot", to set off optional letter sequences and create gender-ambiguous written forms. Thus
| Masculine | Feminine | Inclusive |
| intellectuel | intellectuelle | intellectuel·le |
| musicien | musicienne | musicien·ne |
| représentés | représentées | représenté·e·s |
Thus, as Le Figaro put it,
Pour que les femmes comme les hommes «soient inclus·e.s, se sentent représenté·e·s et s'identifient», le Haut Conseil à l'égalité entre les femmes et les hommes recommandait en 2015, dans un guide pratique, d'utiliser l'écriture inclusive.
Figaro's headline was "Féminisme : les délires de l'écriture «inclusive»" ("Feminism: the delirium of inclusive writing"), which led to comments like this one:
Le patriarcat terrifié par les féministes armées d'un stylo et d'une nouvelle règle d'accord grammatical, ça donne ça. #lesdéliresduFigaro pic.twitter.com/fJG2UOZ0Nu
— Laurence Rossignol (@laurossignol) October 6, 2017
For more, see Michèle Jacobs-Hermès, "L’écriture inclusive pour en finir avec l'invisibilité des femmes dans la langue française", TV5Monde 10/6/2017, or any of dozens of other recent reactions. In addition to (anti-)feminism, linguistic conservatism, and so on, the discussion has brought up the ancient Sapir-Whorf debate, e.g. Peggy Sastre, "L'écriture inclusive, ça marchera jamais (et tant mieux)", Slate.fr 10/4/2017. Interestingly, some of the most convincing recent pro-S-W-hypothesis evidence comes from studies of the effect of purely morphological gender on attitudes towards words and concepts that have no biological gender. See Lera Boroditsky and Lauren Schmidt, "Sex, Syntax, and Semantics", 2000, mentioned in "Sapir/Whorf: sex (pro) and space (anti)", 11/19/2003.
Part of the reason for the timing of this uproar seems to be the prospect that French computer keyboards might change. At least, that's what Le Figaro says:
Dès 2018, vos claviers d'ordinateurs pourraient bien accueillir une touche comprenant le «point milieu», ce signe typographique préconisé par les féministes pour utiliser l'écriture inclusive, par exemple: «musicien·ne·s». Ce point que l'on appelle aussi «médian» devrait faire partie en janvier des recommandations de l'Association française de normalisation (Afnor2). «On envisage que ce signe apparaisse sur une touche en bas à droite, là où il y a beaucoup de ponctuations», précise Philippe Magnabosco, chef de projet chargé de ce dossier d'actualisation des claviers français qui n'ont pas bougé depuis l'introduction du € de l'euro dans les années 1990.
Starting in 2018, your computer keyboards may well acquire a key referencing the "middle dot", the typographical sign recommended by feminists for use in inclusive writing, e.g. "musicien·ne·s". This dot, which is also called "median", was part of the recommendations in January of the French Normalization Association (AFNOR). "We envisage that this character will appear on a key in the lower right, where there are lots of punctuation marks", explains Philippe Magnabosco, head of the project tasked with updating French keyboards, which have not changed since the introduction of the euro sign in the 1990s.
I haven't been able to find any online documentation of this recommendation on the AFNOR web pages, but they appear to offer 118,000 "normes" for sale, so I (and Google) might have missed it.
Jeremy said,
October 9, 2017 @ 8:25 am
Germans do something similar sometimes: Leser_innen for both "Leser" (mail readers) and "Leserinnen" (female readers), for example. No middle dot though but usually an underscore, or an asterisk or a slash depending on how the writer is feeling.
Jeremy said,
October 9, 2017 @ 8:26 am
mail -> male. :)
Paul said,
October 9, 2017 @ 8:29 am
The norm hasn’t been published yet. The “enquête publique” is closed and the plan is for the norm to be published in January 2018.
Here’s the link: https://norminfo.afnor.org/norme/PR%20NF%20Z71-300/interfaces-utilisateurs-dispositions-de-clavier-bureautique-francais/113295
PedroS said,
October 9, 2017 @ 8:43 am
In Portuguese (at least in its European form) , one commonly writes such inclusion (both for gener and for number) with a forward slash or parentheses, e.g.:
"O/a autor/a " The author (m/f)
[(myl) This example, like some of the French examples I've seen, uses the convention in an ambiguous way. Sometimes the two sides of the slash are alternatives ("o/a") and sometimes the material on the right of the slash is optional ("autor/a"). It seems to me that it would be better to have well-defined meanings, maybe with two symbols like "x|y" for "x or y" and "(y)" for "optional y". But maybe I'm being all logical and computer-y about something that ought to be as messy and illogical as the rest of most orthographic systems…]
chris said,
October 9, 2017 @ 9:31 am
Sometimes the two sides of the slash are alternatives ("o/a") and sometimes the material on the right of the slash is optional ("autor/a").
That's just because you're not seeing the empty string before the slash in "autor/a", denoting the alternative to the "a".
Admittedly, it is hard to see an empty string that isn't clearly delimited, but it shouldn't be that unfamiliar to linguists, since it has many other uses in language, such as the plural ending for "deer".
…snark aside, I agree that it isn't clear that "autor/a" denotes "autor|autora" and not, say, "autor|auta", in a formal sense. But pragmatically, familiarity with the language and which strings are actually words that could reasonably be considered counterparts in that context.
Orthographic systems can get away with that sort of thing because most people who are reading them have years of experience reading that language, and even more years of experience understanding it.
The middle-dot usages provided seem to hinge on the relatively small, and final or near final, placement of the differences. I wonder if even the most radical French writer would consider something like "ho·femme"? In that case you really have to think about where the variable part ends and the invariant part begins.
P.S. What definite article does "musicien·ne" take, if it needs one? IIRC, French articles aren't quite as amenable to the dot notation as (some?) nouns and adjectives.
David L said,
October 9, 2017 @ 9:43 am
In English we can often dispose of gendered forms without much difficulty. For example, get rid of 'actress' and call everyone 'actor,' male or female.
Would it seem strange and/or unacceptable for native speakers of French and German to do the same? 'Musicien' and 'Leser' for everyone, in other words. Although there would still be difficulties with choice of article and agreement of adjective, I guess.
Birdseeding said,
October 9, 2017 @ 9:55 am
David L.: What you'll notice with the method used in English is that the forms reverted to are the once previously used by men. A lot of feminists in France and Germany argue that such a method reinforces the hegemony of men being the standard and women always the special case exception, and feel that the cause of equality is better served by a constant reminder that both men and women are in all possible positions. Obviously other countries (my native Sweden, to take a non-English example) have taken the opposite route, but it's not without its complexities. (Another thing to ponder is that some female forms, again with men as the hegemonic norm, suggest that the person is the wife of the office holder rather than the office holder themselves. "Countess", for instance. I don't know how this works in France.)
Frans said,
October 9, 2017 @ 9:57 am
The interpunct is simple to type: Compose, ^, .. Result:
·.RP said,
October 9, 2017 @ 9:58 am
In the case of "représenté·e·s" or "intellectuel·le", the dot seems to draw an undesirable amount of attention to letters which, for most speakers, are entirely silent. On the other hand, with "musicien·ne", how does one pronounce it when reading aloud or when subvocalising? Do you just have to expand it to "musicien ou musicienne"?
Birdseeding said,
October 9, 2017 @ 10:05 am
One thing to consider here is the next step – the work towards fully inclusive gender neutrality, that is, also including non-binary people, not just men and women. (Please, hold your prescriptivist cissexism out of the discussion – a linguist would have to acknowledge that non-binary language exists and is used, whatever your conception of gender.)
I know with Spanish, a common trope a few years ago was replacing the (gendering) "a" and "o" with "@" – amig@s, for example, for both amigas and amigos. Today, at least in radical circles, an even more inclusive approach would be using "x" instead – i.e. amigxs – which would include both men, women and those outside the male-female binary.
Does a similar movement exist in French and German?
Joseph F Foster said,
October 9, 2017 @ 10:25 am
And if we're reading a passage aloud, Sr@a. Birdseeding, how do we know how to pronounce amig@s?
Ellen K. said,
October 9, 2017 @ 10:27 am
How to people pronounce amig@s or amigxs? Or do people not care about the unpronounceability of these?
Timo said,
October 9, 2017 @ 10:27 am
David L.: It's common practice in Germany (in writing and whatever talking is based on writing) to mention women where women are included: Leser und Leserinnen. That's been the case for centuries. – But nobody realistically talks like that. Everyone of course uses the form unmarked for biological sex. Some weeks ago I overheard a lady selling writing supplies, talking about how she was left-handed: »Ich bin ja auch Linkshänder.« (Repeatedly.)
Historical linguist Daniel Scholten has an article on his website (written in German) about the grammatical and political circumstances of gendered writing: http://www.belleslettres.eu/content/deklination/genus-gendersprech.php
Birdseeding said,
October 9, 2017 @ 10:37 am
Joseph/Ellen: Amig@s I've only ever seen in writing.
Amigxs, a touch cumbersomely, is often [aˈmiɣeks]. It may be inclusive, but it's hardly the most practical. Who knows if it will lose out to something else eventually.
Codrington said,
October 9, 2017 @ 11:04 am
From the blog of a French author/translator:
"Profitons-en pour régler un vieux compte grammatical : il est inutile en français de dire "chères lectrices, chers lecteurs" pour donner l'impression qu'on ne néglige personne. Ceci est un truc de politiciens, inventé par un directeur de communication ou un chargé de relations publiques, donc un trafiquant de mots payé (et respecté) pour ne pas respecter la langue, encore moins le public de son patron, bref, un Séguéla de pacotille, ce qui est bien le pire des pléonasmes. En français, le masculin englobe le féminin et le sous-entend par défaut ; et si cela défrise les féministes, elles (pardon : ils ; car il y a aussi des hommes féministes) n'ont qu'à se dire que le masculin s'emploie justement par "défaut".
Seul Pierre Desproges, avec son sens inné de la dérision, a su utiliser avec bonheur cette formulation barbare et démagogique ; ses vibrants appels "Belges, Belges !" ou "Tourangeaux, Tour-Angèle, Tour-Simone !" résonnent encore entre nos oreilles. Mais la contre-réforme arrive ; récemment, j'ai entendu quelqu'un dire "Desproges ? J'ai jamais aimé ; c'est trop écrit." C'est ça, ouais ; et Mozart, y a trop de notes, pas vrai ?"
http://alfred-boudry.blogspot.com/2017/09/il-etait-une-mauvaise-foi-chap-8.html
Doug Henning Jr said,
October 9, 2017 @ 1:36 pm
I first saw @ used in Spain during a demonstration "contra precaridad" on May Day 2006, where signs demanded better working conditions and pay for "l@s precari@s". I like to imagine that the @-vowel splits the difference between /o/ and /a/, retaining both rounding and backness: basically the CAUGHT sound that my own American idiolect lacks.
Doug Henning Jr said,
October 9, 2017 @ 1:38 pm
*Contra _precariedad_, that is.
Joke Kalisvaart said,
October 9, 2017 @ 2:29 pm
In Dutch we write the extra letters that are needed for the feminine form in brackets.
So to write vriend (male friend) and vriendin (female friend) in one word, we would write vriend(in).
Sometimes it gets a bit complicated if you have to remove letters from the male version too. That gives you things like
serveerder – serveerster -> serveer(d)(st)er
leraar – lerares –> lera(a)r(es)
David Cameron Staples said,
October 9, 2017 @ 3:30 pm
I've seen the bracket notation in French as well: "mes aimé(e)s"
Bob Ladd said,
October 9, 2017 @ 4:18 pm
@Jeremy:
In German I've only ever seen an internal upper-case letter ("LeserInnen"), not the underscore you mention. This usage seems to be pretty widespread in job ads and notices.
John Roth said,
October 9, 2017 @ 4:41 pm
Two notes. First, when I started using an epicene pronoun of my own invention a number of years ago, I noticed a definite shift in how I regarded the subject: score one for a relatively mild form of Sapir-Whorf.
The other note is that the attempt to insert the gender-neutral suffix -person was an abject failure. The places where there are now gender-neutral forms of nouns of occupation mostly seem to have substituted a completely different word: server for waiter/waitress, letter-carrier for mailman, etc.
And there are still a number of nouns with -ess endings that seem to still be in common use and show no signs of fading: these include actress, goddess, priestess, waitress and others. And if you try to substitute god and priest for goddess and priestess in many circles, you are likely to be the recipient of a divine malediction.
mg said,
October 9, 2017 @ 4:58 pm
It seems to me that the heavily gendered languages, like French and Spanish, also need to add a gender-neutral substitute for "le/la", etc. This isn't an issue in English, where "the" is the same in "the doctor" regardless of gender.
@John Roth – most reviews I see these days use actor for all genders. And, for the most part, I no longer see less frequently used constructs like comedienne or executrix. Since most English nouns are non-gendered, even ones that refer to people (doctor, teacher, sprinter), as are articles (the/a) I think most people don't make assumptions about the gender of the person when the non-feminine form is used.
Lars said,
October 9, 2017 @ 6:17 pm
Already there in Catalan. Quote from the Wikipedia article "Interpunct":
The flown dot (Catalan: punt volat) is used in Catalan between two Ls in cases where each belongs to a separate syllable, for example cel·la, "cell". This distinguishes such "geminate Ls" (ela geminada), which are pronounced [ɫː], from "double L" (doble ela), which are written without the flown dot and are pronounced [ʎ]. In situations where the flown dot is unavailable, periods (as in col.lecció) or hyphens (as in col-lecció) are frequently used as substitutes, but this is tolerated rather than encouraged.
Lars said,
October 9, 2017 @ 6:18 pm
This was in reference to the keyboard layout, obviously. The usages are entirely different.
Alyssa said,
October 9, 2017 @ 6:33 pm
This kind of thing is very common here in Montreal, especially in business contexts. Usually when I see it it's with parentheses, eg: "si vous êtes intéressé(e)".
I don't really have strong feelings about it personally, but I must say that if you're going to do it, I like the middle dot much more than the alternatives I've seen. It gets the point across without being too intrusive, and avoids the implication that the feminine form is optional / an afterthought.
Jean-Sébastien Girard said,
October 9, 2017 @ 10:16 pm
re: Codrington's comment (and here I'm lambasting Boudry, not Codrington): Look, the défense de la langue française-styled antifeminists coming out of the woodwork. (I'll not rehash the well-explained argument that the very creation of the rule was meant as a misogynistic marginalization of females in the belle-lettres milieu. Others have done it much better than I. There's a reason "auteur" and "écrivain" once had well-established feminines that fell out of use even though the amount of females writers never diminished!)
That the french are suddenly discovering the concept is hilarious to me because such language and formulas have been popular in Quebec have been popular for years, if not decades. To name but one example the name of most departmental student unions in Quebec are explicitly inclusive. The specific solutions vary greatly, parentheses seem to be preferred, but there's been some use of the hyphen to do precisely what is proposed here for the middle dot.
Michael Watts said,
October 10, 2017 @ 2:01 am
It's not as if English doesn't have this problem too. Parentheses are standard, as in the invented example "keep your dog(s) leashed".
Ellen Kozisek said,
October 10, 2017 @ 9:22 am
But, John Roth, "actress" is fading. Not fading away, but it definitely is sometimes replaced by "actor", replacing the feminine marked form with the unmarked form. Which seems to me to fall under "fading".
And you yourself admit reduction in the use of the terms waiter/waitress, replaced by server.
J.W. Brewer said,
October 10, 2017 @ 11:50 am
To integrate various of the comments upthread, we have two different common patterns in English (at least in AmEng) for replacing gendered pairs of occupational descriptions thought out-of-date. Pattern A is exemplified by actor/actress shifting to actor (for everyone regardless of sex). Pattern B is exemplified by waiter/waitress shifting to server (for everyone regardless of sex). I'm not sure if there's any non-ad-hoc explanation for which pattern will manifest in any given situation, other than the mild one of the males traditionally in the profession already having a non-gendered-sounding alternative that they kinda like anyways (firefighter instead of fireman, police officer instead of policeman) being a factor tending to promote Pattern B. But I have no theory re why a quondam "actress" would want to be called an actor instead when it seems implausible that a quondam "waitress" would want to be called a server instead. Put another way, I'm not sure why historically "waiter" would seem irreformably male rather than just default/unmarked, when it seems highly likely that one of the reasons forms like "authoress" and "editrix" fell out of use much earlier is that author/editor felt more like the default/unmarked words than like distinctively male ones.
J.W. Brewer said,
October 10, 2017 @ 11:52 am
sorry typo – should have been "seems implausible that a quondam 'waitress' would want to be called a waiter instead."
mg said,
October 10, 2017 @ 12:01 pm
But I have no theory re why a quondam "actress" would want to be called an actor instead when it seems implausible that a quondam "waitress" would want to be called a server instead.
First, it's often not the workers who choose the alternatives. Second, my guess is that in some cases it's harder to think of an alternative than others (for example, I can't think of any word likely to be taken up in common parlance to replace actor, though maybe it's just my lack of imagination).
For all situations, the feminine has always implied "you are different from the norm, which is the male". If doctor and astronaut and painter are fine for both genders, why not actor?
Finally, and very importantly, when you have gender binaries in terminology it leaves out those with alternative gender identities. Why should there be any need to differentiate job titles by gender anyway? The person on stage or screen is acting, regardless of their gender identity.
mg said,
October 10, 2017 @ 12:05 pm
Sorry my attempt at using HTML failed – the first para above was from J.W. Brewer. Also, J.W. Brewer said "seems implausible that a quondam 'waitress' would want to be called a waiter instead."
Why does that seem implausible to you? I have never preferred being called by words that call out my gender (other than "Mom"). My job title is gender-neutral and I prefer it that way.
J.W. Brewer said,
October 10, 2017 @ 12:31 pm
mg: My theory is that "server" emerged as an alternative precisely because "waiter" is for some reason (but what that reason is is what I don't understand) widely viewed as specifically signalling maleness in a way that many other occupational titles ending in -er or -or aren't. But of course the same has been historically true for "actor," and that's in a profession where the M/F decision is more likely to be salient because (for good or for ill) many casting decisions are made on the assumption that an M should play such and such role in the script while an F should play such-and-such else role.
mg said,
October 10, 2017 @ 12:44 pm
Except these days, the male/female distinction has become less clear – especially in acting (e.g., Orange is the New Black). As more trans and gender-fluid people enter the field, the distinction becomes more difficult. Casting decisions may still depend on it, but reporters and reviewers don't need to make that distinction and find their lives easier if they don't try.
Peter Taylor said,
October 10, 2017 @ 1:08 pm
@Doug Henning Jr, Spanish has five vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/. "L@s precari@s" is pronounced either as "los precarios" or as "los precarios y las precarias".
Dagwood said,
October 10, 2017 @ 1:49 pm
Never in a million years did I imagine any need for the word "poetess" until I edited a native Persian speaker's academic paper (in English) on the Iranian poet, Forough Farrokhzad. That gendered form succinctly identified her as female, of course, whereas her name wouldn't for most Americans or other English-speakers.
Paul said,
October 10, 2017 @ 2:37 pm
The Figaro excerpt is (inadvertently) funny. The subject of the first sentence is “Les femmes” hence the rest of the sentence should be written in the feminine form. This means that the “inclusiveness” is directed towards men … oh well. Most mocking examples of inclusive writing are purposefully over the top. Proponents of inclusive writing actually promote the middle dot variant as a last resort, when gender neutral forms or périphrases can’t be used.
mg said,
October 10, 2017 @ 2:53 pm
@Dagwood – why was it important to have the noun or name identify her as female? Didn't the author of the academic paper ever say "she" or "her"? I would find it hard to write about anyone without ever using a pronoun.
J.W. Brewer said,
October 10, 2017 @ 2:54 pm
On further reflection it does seem striking that the focus (in the phenomenon discussed in the original post) is on "inclusive writing" rather than "inclusive language," i.e. on sending the desired signal of equality and inclusion via purely orthographic distinctions that cannot be reproduced in speech. If the information above that "Latin@" is pronounced identically to "Latino" is accurate, what is the sort of person who is careful to use "Latin@" rather than "Latino" when writing supposed to do when speaking in order to remain consistent? Hold up a sign?
Ellen K. said,
October 10, 2017 @ 3:08 pm
I think with waiter/waitress, waitress is the normal, with waiter marking one as outside the norm, which would make it odd to switch to "waiter" as the term for everybody. Yet we can't use "waitress" for everyone because it's markedly feminine. That, plus the existence of server and other non-gender-marked alternatives means "waiter" and waitress remain male and female terms.
J.W. Brewer said,
October 10, 2017 @ 4:18 pm
Not sure I would agree that "waitress" is unmarked/default, but it's probably true that historically restaurants with mostly-or-all-female waitstaff and restaurants with mostly-or-all-male waitstaff were often very different sorts of establishments, making the jobs (at a stereotypical level) different beyond the issue of sex and possibly contributing to the usefulness of "server" as a higher-level abstraction.
Ellen K. said,
October 10, 2017 @ 6:18 pm
J.W. Brewer, I didn't say unmarked nor default. In fact, I later, you'll note, said it's not unmarked. My wording was "the normal", as in, significantly more females than males hold this job. This page says 70% female in the U.S. https://datausa.io/profile/soc/353031/#demographics
Terry Hunt said,
October 10, 2017 @ 6:59 pm
@ mg:
". . . I can't think of any word likely to be taken up in common parlance to replace actor. . .".
Thespian?
mg said,
October 10, 2017 @ 7:26 pm
@Terry Hunt: I thought of thespian but doubt it's likely to be taken up in common parlance.
Chas Belov said,
October 10, 2017 @ 11:30 pm
I've always pronounced Latin@ as La-ti-no-ə. I pronounce Latinx as La-ti-neks but suppose it would properly be La-ti-ne-quees. When the gender-neutral movement started years ago in English I decided I would replace mailman with postal person in order to maintain the alliteration.
Levantine said,
October 11, 2017 @ 2:56 am
Dagwood, wouldn't "woman poet" have done the trick? To be clear, I'm not saying "poetess" shouldn't be used, but I think it's a stretch to say that such a word is necessary.
Birdseeding said,
October 11, 2017 @ 3:15 am
@Ellen Kozisek
One interesting example is the MTV Movie Awards, which since its innception in 1992 has always had separate male and female acting categories – until this year, where they've just been replaced by "best performance" regardless of gender. I feel it may be a while before the Academy emulates its brasher young cousin, but the trend definitely points that way.
Robert Coren said,
October 11, 2017 @ 9:48 am
A poet — I think it might have been Audre Lord — once said, "Being called a poetess always brings out the terroristress in me."
Kate Bunting said,
October 12, 2017 @ 3:54 am
Some way up this thread Birdseeding said:
Another thing to ponder is that some female forms, again with men as the hegemonic norm, suggest that the person is the wife of the office holder rather than the office holder themselves. "Countess", for instance. I don't know how this works in France.
This certainly used to be the case in French, though I don't suppose it is nowadays. In Pagnol's 'Le Château de ma mère' (1958, but describing events around 1903) Madame la Directrice is the headmaster's wife.
Graeme said,
October 12, 2017 @ 5:05 am
Child of 80s feminism, I still write 's/he' sometimes. Writing in abstract settings, in law and politics, it seemed to achieve what the French inclusivists are aiming for.
According to google ngram s/he is out of fashion. Presumably giving way to the 'they' juggernaut, which trans/intergender concern will reinforce.
'They' is practical. But oddly impersonal for a personal pronoun.
tuncay said,
October 12, 2017 @ 1:13 pm
I am 100% sympathetic to the end goals of the feminist movement, but I find myself perplexed quite often at the tools used to get there.
This écriture inclusive is quite a weird move since: (i) no sane person will ever write like this in an unforced setting, hence it's doomed, (ii) it will possibly making life more complicated for people who use computers by introducing keyboard differences, (iii) it defeats one of the reasons for the text's very existence : that it's going to be read; how in the world will "lecteur.rice.s curieux.se.s" be pronounced? (excuse my absences of middle-dots)
I don't understand why les féministes français don't push for unmarked nouns instead: Everyone uses the currently masculine version of the nouns, so the nouns are deprived of their masculinity and equality accomplished. Everyone speaks/writes these already so nothing to introduce either. Everyone is un lecteur curieux, un musicien etc. Why not?
Codrington said,
October 16, 2017 @ 5:12 am
Another argument against inclusive writing: the added layer of complexity it introduces: https://twitter.com/BFMTV/status/919821266462429185/video/1