Gender neutral language in French: Difference between revisions

Up to the 18th century, in adjectives and past participles, the masculine gender didn't necessarily prevail over the feminine in cases where the genders could theoretically be congruent: proximity and free-choice agreement coexisted along with the masculine-over-feminine rule.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":2" /> For a long part of ancient French history, proximity agreement was the most widespread way to make adjectives, past participles, etc. agree (cf. Anglade 1931:172).<ref>Anglade, Joseph (1931): ''Grammaire élémentaire de l'ancien français''. Paris: Armand Colin, 157-196. Online at: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Grammaire_%C3%A9l%C3%A9mentaire_de_l%E2%80%99ancien_fran%C3%A7ais/Chapitre_6.</ref> Today, this agreement could allow for equality between grammatical genders instead of the masculine-over-feminine hierarchy that was suggested in the 17th and 18th century by the French grammarians Malherbe, Vaugelas, Bouhours and Beauzée:<blockquote>« 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" />

How do neologisms become part of the vocabulary of a language? Roswitha Fischer, citing Renate Bartsch, puts it like this:<blockquote>"1) [T]he item is used by a prestigious group that is educated and has political and economical power; 2) it is used in written discourse; and 3) it is located in an area where several varieties come into contact and assimilate [...]."<ref>Bartsch, Renate (1987): ''Sprachnormen: Theorie und Praxis: Studienausgabe''. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110935875, cited by Fischer, Roswitha (1998): ''Lexical Change in Present-Day English. A Corpus-Based Study of the Motivation, Institutionalization, and Productivity of Creative Neologism''. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Online at: https://books.google.ch/books?id=H93nAVbwZwwC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de#v=onepage&q&f=false.</ref></blockquote>Currently, gender neutral French neologisms are not widespread, even in LGBT and, more specifically, nonbinary communities. We find isolated uses of them in the written form<ref>Café aux étoiles. maison d'édition sereine et onirique (no data): ''Littérature''. Online at: https://cafeauxetoiles.fr/litterature/.</ref><ref>Les Ourses à plumes. Webzine féministe (2022): ''Les elfes noirs ne sont jamais noirs (1) : enjeux de la représentation dans les fictions de l'imaginaire''. Online at: https://lesoursesaplumes.info/tag/une/.</ref>; their use in speech remains rather peripheral too. However, they are located on the Internet, where African, American, European and minority language francophones all around the world can technically meet. Additionally, descriptive (cf. Le Robert) instead of prescriptive (cf. L'Académie) approaches have lead to one of them, 'iel', being used in written discourse since 2021.