Gender neutral language in French: Difference between revisions

* '''Refeminization''':<ref name=":0">Divergenres (2021): ''Guide de grammaire neutre et inclusive''. Québec. Online at: https://divergenres.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/guide-grammaireinclusive-final.pdf, p. 3.</ref> Before the 17th century, French had — as Italian, Spanish, and other romance languages still have today — a feminine inflection for female professionals. However, for several reasons (both societal<ref name=":1">Becquelin, Hélène: ''Langage en tout genre. Argument historique''. Université de Neuchâtel. Online at: https://www.unine.ch/epicene/home/pourquoi/argument-historique.html (12.12.2023).</ref> and linguistic<ref name=":2">MOREAU, Marie-Louise. ''L’accord de proximité dans l’écriture inclusive. Peut-on utiliser n’importe quel argument ?'' In : ''Les discours de référence sur la langue française'' [en ligne]. Bruxelles : Presses de l’Université Saint-Louis, 2019 (généré le 12 décembre 2023). Disponible sur Internet : <<nowiki>http://books.openedition.org/pusl/26517</nowiki>>. ISBN : 9782802802457. DOI : <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pusl.26517</nowiki>.</ref>, as the French language was being standardized and dialect speakers had to learn French), grammarians made sure that the feminine denominations vanished from the language.<ref name=":1" /> Today, a lot of people talk of "feminization", because they feel like these occupational titles are neologisms. However, they actually aren't, since they are being recovered from an older version of the French language, which is why "refeminization" is more accurate. Even though it sounds counter-intuitive, refeminization is part of a process to degenderize the French language, since studies from different languages<ref>Tibblin, J., Weijer, J. van de, Granfeldt, J., & Gygax, P. (2023). There are more women in joggeur·euses than in joggeurs : On the effects of gender-fair forms on perceived gender ratios in French role nouns. ''Journal of French Language Studies, 33'', 28‑51. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959269522000217.</ref><ref>Heise, E. (2003). Auch einfühlsame Studenten sind Männer: Das generische Maskulinum und die mentale Repräsentation von Personen [Even empathic students are men: The generic masculine and the mental representation of persons]. ''Verhaltenstherapie & Psychosoziale Praxis, 35''(2), 285–291.</ref><ref>Gygax, P., Sato, S., Oetl, A. & Gabriel, U. (2021). The masculine form and its multiple interpretations: a challenge for our cognitive system. ''Language Sciences, 83''. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2020.101328.</ref><ref>Lisa Irmen, Ute Linner (2005): Die Repräsentation generisch maskuliner Personenbezeichnungen. In: ''Zeitschrift für Psychologie/Journal of Psychology'' 213:3, 167-175.</ref><ref>Gygax, P. M., Elmiger, D., Zufferey, S., Garnham, A., Sczesny, S., von Stockhausen, L., Braun, F., & Oakhill, J. (2019). A Language Index of Grammatical Gender dimensions for those interested in the impact of grammatical gender on the way we perceive women and men. ''Frontiers in Psychology. 10:1604.'' doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01604.</ref><ref>Friederike Braun, Susanne Oelkers, Karin Rogalski, Janine Bosak, Sabine Sczesny (2007): “Aus Gründen der Verständlichkeit ...“: Der Einfluss generisch maskuliner und alternativer Personenbezeichnungen auf die kognitive Verarbeitung von Texten. In: ''Themenheft: Kognitionspsychologische Beiträge zu Genus und Sexus in der Sprache 58'' (3). DOI: <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1026/0033-3042.58.3.183</nowiki>.</ref><ref>Gygax P.M., Schoenhals L., Lévy A., Luethold P. and Gabriel U. (2019). Exploring the Onset of a Male-Biased Interpretation of Masculine Generics Among French Speaking Kindergarten Children. ''Frontiers in Psychology. 10:1225''. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01225.</ref><ref>Dagmar Stahlberg, Sabine Sczesny (2001): Effekte des generischen Maskulinums und alternativer Sprachformen auf den Gedanklichen Einbezug von Frauen. In: ''Psychologische Rundschau'' 52(3), 131-140. </ref><ref>Sato, Oetl, Gabriel & Gygax (2017). Assessing the impact of gender grammaticization on thought: A psychological and psycholinguistic perspective. ''Osnabrücker Beiträge zur Sprachtheorie (OBST), 90.''</ref><ref>Bross, F. & Kurz, L. (2023). Zur Wahrnehmung des generischen Maskulinums in Erstgliedern von Komposita und maskuliner Epizöna. ''Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik'', ''51''(3), 397-423. https://doi.org/10.1515/zgl-2023-2022.</ref><ref>Sato, S., Gygax, P., & Gabriel, U. (2016). Gauging the impact of gender grammaticization in different languages: Application of a linguistic-visual paradigm. ''Frontiers in Psychology – Language Sciences, 7, 140.''</ref><ref>Susanne Günthner (2019): Sprachwissenschaft und Geschlechterforschung: Übermittelt unsere Sprache ein androzentrisches Weltbild? In: ''Handbuch Interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung'' 65, 571-579.</ref><ref>Sato, S., Gabriel, U., & Gygax, P. (2016). Changing male-dominant representations in German: A study on nominalized adjectives and participles. ''Journal of Language and Social Psychology, First View.'' doi: 10.1177/0261927X15625442.</ref><ref>Vervecken, D., Gygax, P., Gabriel, U., Guillod, M., Hannover, B. (2015). Warm businessmen, cold housewives? Effects of gender-fair language on adolescents’ perceptions of occupations. ''Frontiers in Psychology – Cognition.'' http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01437.</ref><ref>Lévy, A., Gygax, P., & Gabriel, U., (2014). Fostering the generic interpretation of grammatically masculine forms: When my aunt could be one of the mechanics. ''The Journal of Cognitive Psychology'', 26, 27-38.</ref><ref>Garnham, A., Gabriel, U., Gygax, P., Sarrasin, O. & Oakhill, J. (2012). Gender representation in language and grammatical cues: When beauticians, musicians and mechanics remain men. ''Discourse Processes, 49,'' 481-500''.''</ref><ref>Gygax, P., Gabriel, U., Lévy, A., Pool, E., Grivel, M., & Pedrazzini, E. (2012). The masculine form and its competing interpretations in French: When linking grammatically masculine role names to female referents is difficult. ''Journal of Cognitive Psychology'', ''24'', 395-408.</ref><ref>Pascal Gygax, Sandrine Zufferey, Ute Gabriel (2021): ''Le cerveau pense-t-il au masculin ? Cerveau, langage et représentations sexistes''. Le Robert: Paris.</ref><ref>ALONZO Philippe, SILVERA Rachel, « Le genre masculin n'est pas neutre », ''Travail, genre et sociétés'', 2000/1 (N° 3), p. 23-24. DOI : 10.3917/tgs.003.0023. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-travail-genre-et-societes-2000-1-page-23.htm.</ref><ref>Brauer Markus. Un ministre peut-il tomber enceinte ? L’impact du générique masculin sur les représentations mentales. In: ''L'année psychologique''. 2008 vol. 108, n°2. pp. 243-272. URL: www.persee.fr/doc/psy_0003-5033_2008_num_108_2_30971.</ref> have shown that the generic masculine is cognitively not neutral, even though the French prescriptive grammar considers it as such.<ref name=":3">Alchimy (2017): « Le masculin l’emporte sur le féminin » : Bien plus qu’une règle de grammaire. ''Usbek&Rica'': "Selon Le Bon Usage de Maurice Grevisse, l'adjectif se met donc au 'genre indifférencié, c'est-à-dire au masculin'."</ref> By mentioning also the feminine form of a word, speakers visualize people of more genders than just one.

!Masculine

!Feminine by the Académie

!Refeminized

*'''Doublets:''' For example, "Nous prions les '''étudiantes''' et '''étudiants''' de remettre leur copie à la personne responsable". Some people don't enjoy the repetition<ref>OMPI (2022): ''Guide de l’OMPI pour un langage inclusif en français''. Genève. Online at: https://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/women-and-ip/fr/docs/guidelines-inclusive-language.pdf (12.12.2023), p. 7.</ref>, others consider that the doublets don't encompass all genders.<ref name=":4">Ménard, Jean-Sébastien (2021): ''Pour un français neutre et une inclusion des personnes non binaires : une entrevue avec Florence Ashley''. Longueuil. Online at:https://www.cegepmontpetit.ca/static/uploaded/Files/Cegep/Centre%20de%20reference/Le%20francais%20saffiche/Une-entrevue-avec-Florence-Ashley.pdf (12.12.2023), p. 13, p. 6.</ref>

*'''Shortened doublets'''<ref name=":4" />: Only the suffix is repeated, not the entire word<ref name=":0" />.

!Middle dot

!Dot

!Parentheses

!Slash

!Dash

*'''Grammatically fixed gender nouns and impersonal formulations:'''<ref name=":5" /> The table below shows gendered language on the left and neutral (i.e. grammatical gender that has nothing to do with biological sex or social identity) inclusive language on the right.

!Gendered inclusive language

!Neutral inclusive language

!Marked binary gender

!Grammatically fixed gender

*'''Proximity agreement:'''<ref>EPFL (2023): ''L’accord de proximité''. Online at:https://www.epfl.ch/about/equality/fr/langage-inclusif/guide/principes/accord/ (12.12.2023).</ref> Up to the 18th century, in adjectives and past participles, the masculine gender didn't prevail over the feminine gender in cases where the genders could theoretically be congruent: proximity agreement prevailed.<ref name=":2" /> This congruency allows for equality between grammatical genders instead of the masculine-over-feminine hierarchy that was decided in the 17th and 18th century by the French grammarians Malherbe, Vaugelas, Bouhours and Beauzée:

**« Le genre masculin, étant le plus noble, doit prédominer toutes les fois que le masculin et le féminin se trouvent ensemble. » (Claude Favre de Vaugelas, ''Remarques sur la langue français''e, 1647).<ref name=":1" />

**« Lorsque les deux genres se rencontrent, il faut que le plus noble l’emporte » (Bouhours 1675).<ref name=":3" />

**« Le genre masculin est réputé plus noble que le féminin à cause de la supériorité du mâle sur la femelle » (Beauzée 1767).<ref name=":3" />

!Masculine prevails over feminine

!Proximity agreement