The battle for inclusion is more than linguistics
Introduction
In recent years we have seen that the discussion on the use of inclusive language has become increasingly relevant. This discussion not only focuses on the feasibility of this language but it also covers its possible modalities as well as its prohibition or admissibility in different environments (state, educational, public administration acts, etc.). This article will first review various regulatory actions (resolutions and bills) in Argentina and different actors' reactions against them. Following, we will analyze what we mean when we talk about inclusive language, and we will briefly explain the lack of agreement in relation to its definition, to then delve into the arguments for and against its use. Finally, we will explain the potential impact that the aforementioned regulatory endeavours may have on the right to freedom of expression, and we will reveal those questions that seem to remain unanswered but that need to be addressed in this discussion. As we will later conclude, this lack of answers is due, in part, to the fact that we are facing a debate that is more political and legal in nature, not merely linguistic.
Resolution 2566/MEDGC/22 and the bills presented before the Argentine Congress
On June 9 of this year, the Ministry of Education of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (hereinafter, CABA) issued the Resolution 2566/MEDGC/22 which established that teachers in the exercise of their duties in state and private educational establishments of initial, primary and secondary levels, must carry out teaching activities and execute institutional communications in accordance with the rules of the Spanish language, its grammatical norms and the official guidelines for its teaching. The measure would apply only to the contents taught in class, to the material given to students and to official documents of educational establishments.
Several Civil society organizations, unions, the National government and y CABA agencies condemned this resolution for considering that it prohibited the use of inclusive language in the classroom and for violating freedom of expression. This decision of the City government took place after getting the results obtained by students in language exams carried out after the pandemic. Furthermore, the web page of the government states that “The new rule is based on the premise that the Spanish language offers various options to communicate in an inclusive manner without the need to misrepresent it, or add greater complexity to reading comprehension and fluency.” Therefore, the government of CABA considers that inclusive language, by not following the unified orthographic rules of the Spanish language, prevents students from understanding and reading and, therefore, should be avoided.
In fact, after the promulgation of this rule, severalprovincial legislatureslike Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, La Pampa and Tucumán, presented bills of law seeking to restrict the use of inclusive language. Although, in the cases of the provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe local governments spoke out against these projects.
In any case, this resolution came to pass in a more generalized context and brings to the public agenda a debate that already has been going on for a while. Outside the educational field, at the national level, we find several bills that seek to regulate the use of inclusive language. One example is the bill 2632/2022 from May XNUMX of this year which provides for the use of the "proper Spanish language, respecting the rules established by the Royal Spanish Academy" in Public Administration and its decentralized bodies. In other words, the project aims to prevent the use of the so-called inclusive language. It also provides that any public official (using the masculine noun, of course,) that fails to comply with what is ordered in the bill would be seriously at fault and will be administrative and criminally liable. Finally, the project invites the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and the provinces to join.
Added to this bill there are others presented in the Senate(2721/2021and1526/2021) that also sought to prohibit the use of inclusive language in thedrafting of official documents and the presentations that people could make before national authorities. But unlike this year's bill, they also ban its use in schools. Both projects highlight the need to maintain the correct use of the Spanish language, and inclusive language is rejected for reasons similar to those used by the CABA Resolution: it hinders comprehension and difficults reading.
On the other hand, a bill presented in XNUMX had a different goal. It explained that it sought to "guarantee the exercise of the right to freedom of expression in the use of the plurality of linguistic uses that encompasses gender-inclusive language, in all areas in which people develop their social life." In contrast to the bills mentioned above, this one sought to guarantee its use in official documents and in educational establishments but without making it mandatory. Unlike the other projects, it grounds the use of language in the right to freedom of expression and this affirmation is not insignificant. In addition, it is based on recommendations from international organizations in relation to gender-inclusive language use of gender-inclusive language in Spanish), the Ley de Identidad de Género 26.743 [Gender Identity Law], decisions adopted within the framework of university institutions that allow its use and highlights Presidential Decree No. 476/21, which authorized the inclusion of option X in the Passport and in the National Identity Document for non-binary people.
As can be seen, we find bills that prohibit the use of inclusive language and bills that seek to guarantee its use within the framework of state institutions (in administrative acts, citizen presentations and educational establishments, among others).
What is inclusive language and its use?
Although we do not intend to address in this post the linguistic complexities around the emergence of changes in language, referring particularly to the Spanish language, inclusive language in terms of gender (or non-sexist language) appears as a way to circumvent the traditional use of the masculine "generic", in order to make visible and recognize other identities.
As explained in a guide drafted by the Chilean government concerning the use of inclusive language, it refers to any verbal or written expression that preferably uses neutral vocabulary to avoid any stereotype linked to a particular gender. Another guide, prepared by the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity of Argentina, explains that this language can serve to avoid exclusive linguistic uses of the Spanish language, that is “those forms that, based on an apparent neutrality, prioritize the masculine gender over others and make invisible, exclude and show the inequality that underlies in the ways in which we write, speak, and in short, in which we communicate.” As this guide of recommendations of the National Institute of Associativism and Social Economy explains, this language would help us avoid reproducing patterns that are replicated in the common use of language such as stereotypes, androcentrism, invisibility of women and diversities, and discrimination, among others.
Having said that, inclusive language can be implemented in various ways. One of them helps to promote the identification or visibility of particularities obscured by the use of the generic masculine (for example, from a binary perspective instead of using the masculine noun, using both the masculine and feminine forms in succession). Another is more linked to overcoming the binarism and incorporating other types of identities that are not represented by the use of masculine and feminine genders (for example using the "e" or "x" as gender neutral markers (“todes deben ser vacunades”, “todxs deben ser vacunadxs”), or the use of collective or impersonal structures “it is necessary to be vaccinated”, among others).
Even among those who propose the use of this language, there is no consensus on whether it should include both modes of use, or on how it should be implemented. That is, some people consider it enough to include both binary genders in the expressions, for other people it will be necessary to include some variant that allows non-binary dissident identities to be accepted (e.g.: an “e”, an “x”, an “@”, a “*”, etc), although its use has been criticized for concealing the “a” that represents women.
TheArgentine Academy of Lettersconsiders that the use of this type of language (which it does not classify as such but as "the reflection of a sociopolitical position that a minority group wishes to impose without taking into account the Spanish grammatical system") is a manipulation of language to condemn the invisibility of women. In fact, this institution considers that the linguistic structures of Spanish should not be forced so that they become a reflection of an ideology. None of the variants of the inclusive language would be acceptable except for the one that seeks to apply the nouns in a masculine or feminine form, but as long as it does not threaten the economy of the language and does not slow down syntax.
However, Santiago Kalinowski, Director of the Department of Linguistic and Philological Research of this same institution, considers that inclusive language "aims to establish a position about a situation of injustice regarding gender inequality that is perceived and persists in society, and aims to encourage others to become aware of that situation of injustice."
So, what about freedom of expression and what about those who do not fit the masculine gender or the hegemonic binarism?
Much has been said about prohibitions on inclusive language, but one of the central arguments is linked to the right to freedom of expression. For example, regarding the bills mentioned above that prohibit its use in the public administration (and in presentations before it), it has been stated that preventing its use restricts freedom of self-expression based on how each person identifies. The same has been said of those bills that restrict its use in schools as well as the CABA Resolution. In fact, regarding the Resolution, Kalinowski suggests that it restricts the freedom to receive information transmitted in a gender-sensitive way. In this sense, it is important to remember that many people (cis, trans, non-binary) may not feel represented neither with the use of the masculine gender nor with the use of masculine and feminine nouns, pronouns and adjectives. These can include teachers, students, people making requests to the state, and those issuing state documents, among others. In this way, proscribing the use of inclusive language would undermine the right to self-expression of people who do not feel represented by the aforementioned uses.
However, this gives way to many questions. To assess whether there was indeed an illegitimate restriction on freedom of expression, is it reasonable to apply the same criteria to a bill of law as to a resolution of the CABA Ministry of Education? The answer is likely to be no. Let us remember that the limitations to the right to freedom of expression in the Inter-American Human Rights System are restricted to particular speeches and, furthermore, these limitations must comply with the famous three-part test (legality, necessity and proportionality). Is it the same to prohibit its use in acts of public administration than in citizen presentations, speeches by public authorities or educational establishments? Here the answer also seems to be negative. For example, could we say that the right to freedom of expression is violated if it is prohibited to issue decrees using inclusive language? Would we give the same response when a national authority is forbidden from speaking in inclusive language in their speeches as when a non-binary person is forbidden from petitioning state agencies using language other than the “correct” one? Do the authorities in charge of education have the power to define the contents and material used in class? Does the power that educational authorities have to prohibit teaching classes in German or Lunfardo to facilitate reading comprehension also apply to inclusive language?
It is interesting to think what would happen if there were bills ordering the mandatory use of inclusive language. In this case, it is likely that we would find ourselves faced with a similar situation: commanding people to speak in one way could violate the right to freedom of expression of those who did not want to use the language in that way. What is worse, we would run the risk of creating a sort of speech police. Both prohibition and obligation recreate a binarism that is desirable to avoid, unconditionally, fully, without grey areas: it is either white or black. However, this is not something that should concern us currently because there are no bills in Argentina that order its use, on the contrary, they only seek to allow it.
Let us also remember that one of the arguments used by the CABA government aimed at facilitating understanding, but this is not necessarily the case. As explained in this article "non-binary forms communicate gender diversity better than masculine and are processed at the same rate or faster”. Furthermore, the government did not present evidence on how the use of inclusive language in the classroom was correlated with poor results on language tests. New questions arise: do schools teach using inclusive language or is it a colloquial use? Does the colloquial use of an "e" in certain words to include people who do not feel represented has a negative impact on the "correct" use of the language by its speakers? Can the use of the “e,” something valuable, trigger discussions about how genders are formed in languages and how some generics make some identities invisible? What about the right of those who teach and those who learn to express in a way that reflects their convictions or identities? It is interesting to mention that France, for example, prohibited only the use of inclusive language in written form, but not in oral language, on the grounds that writing introduced midpoints that prevented the transmission of the French language.
Anyway, like Kalinowski says, these reactions are not new. For example, this resistance has occurred numerous times in the past with changes in the Spanish language: both with the use of the voseo as well as with the use of the word "independencia" [independence] (which, curiously, at the time the RAE classified as a "useless neologism" to refer to emancipation).
As David Wallace explains part of the problem lies in identifying the authority that establishes what is well said and what is not. The power of this authority consists in investing a certain dialect or language with the appearance of education, intelligence, power and prestige. For the same reason, Wallace advises using these rules to operate within the system and warns about the potential dangers of politically correct language (such as inclusive language): on the one hand, it is rejected for lacking those virtues and, on the other hand, because it can bring with it a kind of inflexible prescriptivism that threatens sanctions in the real world (no longer just in the grammatical sphere).
In addition, with some degree of lucidity, he subverts the thesis that usually underlies artificial operations on language and points out that it is important to understand that the conventions of language use can serve both for political reflection and as an instrument for change. Confusing them can be dangerous since it can lead to the belief that a society will no longer be discriminatory or elitist just by changing some expressions or language uses. The fallacy would be that the modes of expression of a society produce its attitudes instead of being a product of them. However, something is missing in Wallace's argument and that is the perception that people do not feel represented by the current use of language.
As can be seen, this is a discussion that is not merely linguistic, but is eminently political and legal. We are talking about words or letters that operate in an established language with the purported objective of providing visibility, representation and avoiding discrimination and inequality. Perhaps for similar reasons, Brigitte Vassal cautions that inclusive language alone is not enough to achieve these changes, since the real problem lies in disputing who defines language and what are the limits of inclusion. Like Wallace, Vasallo thinks that "changing something on a symbolic level does not mean that it changes on a material level" and we must also observe that those who propose these changes do not become an alternative inflexible authority.
Conclusion
Within the framework of this debate on inclusive language, there are three general issues that we think are important to highlight. First, can we prevent with prohibitions the changes that arise in language through its use? History has countless examples that prove otherwise. If the right to freedom of expression represents "the unique and precious virtue of thinking about the world from our own perspective and of communicating with others to build, through a deliberative process, not only the way of living that each one has the right to adopt, but the model of society in which we want to live,” it does not seem legal to be able to prohibit one of its demonstrations. Second, it is important to identify that the changes in the symbolic sphere do not necessarily bring changes in the material, although they do bring with them the possibility of representing those who do not identify with the binarism. Third, those who propose the use of inclusive language would have to refrain from becoming what they seek to avoid, that is, an (inclusive) language police, and admit the possibility that such language could take non-established forms (do we use the “e”, the “x”, the “@”, impersonality, etc.?).
To conclude, and without the intention of easily resolving this discussion, we are left with a very simple question to ask ourselves: what kind of society do we want to live in? Therein lies the problem with which inclusive language confronts us.
