"Inclusive language, I don't know much about it...but I hate it!"

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"Inclusive language, I don't know much about it...but I hate it!" The relationship between linguistic and historical knowledge, political orientation and attitudes towards inclusive language

Abstract:

Although gender inclusive writing is widely polarised in public opinion, the exact causes of reluctance towards its use are not always clear. We explore the link between attitudes towards inclusive writing and different factors, such as the level of linguistic or historical knowledge of inclusive writing. We also measured the political orientation of the respondents, as well as their views on the political dimension of language, in order to assess their relationships with attitudes towards inclusive writing. The results show that the more people have historical knowledge of inclusive writing, the more they believe that inclusive writing is a response to political injunctions. The results also show that the further to the right of the political spectrum people are, the less they know about inclusive writing (its tools as well as its history) and the more they reject it. The present study provides new insights - related in particular to knowledge - into the distrust expressed by a part of the population towards new language practices aiming at more equality.

Keywords:

  • psycholinguistics
  • gender inclusive writing
  • French
  • attitudes
  • politics

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Publication information

Publisher:

Association GSL, GLAD! Revue sur le langage, le genre, les sexualités 14 | 2023

Languages:

French

City:

Paris

Year:

2023

Research labels:

Language(s) – discourse – communication
Representations – figurations
Politics

Subjects:

Psycholinguistics

Genres:

Article