Gender neutral language in French: Difference between revisions

{{Gender neutral language}}

Prior to the 17th century, French, like Italian, Spanish, and other Romance languages, utilized feminine inflections to distinguish female professionals. However, for a range of reasons — both societal, such as misogyny,<ref name=":1">Becquelin, H. (no data): ''Langage en tout genre. Argument historique''. Article on non discriminating language. University of Neuchâtel. Online at: https://www.unine.ch/epicene/home/pourquoi/argument-historique.html (retrieved 12.12.2023).</ref><ref name=":12">Viennot, E. (2023): ''Pour un langage non sexiste ! Les accords égalitaires en français''. Online at: https://www.elianeviennot.fr/Langue-accords.html (retrieved 18.12.2023).</ref> and linguistic<ref name=":2">Moreau, M.-L. (2019): L’accord de proximité dans l’écriture inclusive. Peut-on utiliser n’importe quel argument ? In: Dister, A./ Piron, S. (eds.): ''Les discours de référence sur la langue française (Presses de l’Université Saint-Louis)'', 351–378. 10.4000/books.pusl.26517.</ref>, as French was being standardized and dialect speakers were expected to learn French — grammarians ensured that these feminine designations were effectively removed from the language.<ref name=":1" />

!Refeminized

|-

|une auteur(e)

|-

|un professeur

|}

For example, « Nous prions les <u>étudiantes</u> et (les) <u>étudiants</u> de remettre leur copie à la personne responsable ». Some people don't enjoy the repetition,<ref name=":10">OMPI (2022): ''Guide de l’OMPI pour un langage inclusif en français''. Online at: https://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/women-and-ip/fr/docs/guidelines-inclusive-language.pdf (retrieved 12.12.2023).</ref> others consider that the doublets don't encompass all genders,<ref name=":4">Ménard, J.-S. (2021): ''Pour un français neutre et une inclusion des personnes non binaires : une entrevue avec Florence Ashley''. Longueuil: Cégep Édouard-Montpetit. Online at:https://www.cegepmontpetit.ca/static/uploaded/Files/Cegep/Centre%20de%20reference/Le%20francais%20saffiche/Une-entrevue-avec-Florence-Ashley.pdf (retrieved 12.12.2023).</ref> others again are unsure which form to mention first, since the order conveys information about the value the speaker gives to each item.<ref>Pascal, G./Boschard, Μ./Cornet, G./Croci, M./Stegmann, N. (2021): ''Les outils - la (re)féminisation. Langage inclusif''. Online at: https://tube.switch.ch/videos/0xwYktNzRp, 00:50 (retrieved 12.12.2023).</ref>

The feminine suffix is attached to the masculine, rather than the whole word being repeated (as in classical doublets).<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":4" />

|}

For instance, « <u>Les élèves</u> apprennent leur leçon. »; « <u>L'enfant</u> regarde la télévision. »; « <u>Les juges</u> ont pris leur décision. ». As singular articles indicate gender ('la' and 'le'), this technique works best with plural forms. However, it also works with singular forms if the noun begins with a vowel, because the article automatically becomes "l'...," which does not express gender. A drawback is that there are not epicene occupational titles for all professions or functions.<ref name=":0" />

|}

Up until the 18th century, the masculine gender did not always take precedence over the feminine in instances where the genders could theoretically be congruent: proximity<ref>EPFL (2023): ''L’accord de proximité''. Online at:https://www.epfl.ch/about/equality/fr/langage-inclusif/guide/principes/accord/ (retrieved 12.12.2023).</ref> and free-choice agreement coexisted alongside the masculine-over-feminine rule.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":2" /> For a significant portion of Old French history, proximity agreement was the most prevalent method for agreeing adjectives, past participles, etc. (cf. Anglade 1931:172).<ref>Anglade, J. (1931): ''Grammaire élémentaire de l'ancien français''. Paris: Armand Colin, 157–196.</ref> Today, this agreement could facilitate gender equality in grammar instead of the masculine-over-feminine hierarchy that was suggested in the 17th and 18th century by French grammarians such as 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" />

{| class="wikitable"

|+

|-

|Ces œillets et ces roses sont '''beaux'''.

|Ces œillets et ces roses sont '''belles'''.

|-

|}

==Neologisms==

French only distinguishes gender in the third-person singular (cf. 'elle' and 'il'). Up until the 12th century, French knew the neutral subject pronoun 'el'/'al'.<ref>Marchello-Nizia, C. (1989): Le neutre et l’impersonnel. In: ''Linx'' ''21'', 173–179. 10.3406/linx.1989.1139.</ref> Today, 'el' cannot be reintroduced from Old French as it would sound identical to 'elle', the current feminin subject pronoun. As for 'al', it sounds like 'elle' in spoken Canadian French.<ref name=":5">Ashley, F. (2019): Les personnes non-binaires en français : une perspective concernée et militante. In: ''H-France Salon'' ''11''(14).</ref> It could, however, still be a viable option for the rest of the Francophone community.<ref name=":13">Alpheratz (2018): ''Genre neutre.TABLEAUX RÉCAPITULATIFS de mots de genre neutre (extraits)''. Online at: https://www.alpheratz.fr/linguistique/genre-neutre/ (retrieved 15.12.2023).</ref> Nowadays, according to the ''Guide de rédaction inclusive'' (2021:14) from the Laval University,<ref name=":11">Université Laval (2021): ''Guide de rédaction inclusive''. Online at: https://www.ulaval.ca/sites/default/files/EDI/Guide_redaction_inclusive_DC_UL.pdf (retrieved 12.12.2023).</ref> the ''Guide de grammaire neutre et inclusive'' (2021:5) from Divergenres,<ref name=":0" /> the ''Petit dico de français neutre/inclusif'' (2018) from La vie en Queer,<ref name=":6">La vie en Queer (2018): ''Petit dico de français neutre/inclusif''. Online at: https://lavieenqueer.wordpress.com/2018/07/26/petit-dico-de-francais-neutre-inclusif/ (retrieved 15.12.2023).</ref>  and Wiki Trans (2019),<ref name=":7">Wiki Trans (2019): ''Comment parler d'une personne non binaire ?'' Online at: https://wikitrans.co/2019/12/25/comment-parler-dune-personne-non-binaire/ (retrieved 15.12.2023).</ref> the most widely adopted subject (neo)pronoun is 'iel'. It was added to the prestigious dictionary ''Le Robert'' in 2021.<ref>Radio Télévision Suisse (2021): ''L'entrée du pronom "iel" dans Le Robert provoque des remous''. Online at: https://www.rts.ch/info/monde/12651159-lentree-du-pronom-iel-dans-le-robert-provoque-des-remous.html (retrieved 15.12.2023).</ref> Alongside 'iel', Canadian French also uses 'ille'.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /> In metropolitan France, the pronoun 'al', proposed by linguist Alpheratz in their book ''Grammaire du français inclusif'' (2018) has gained some recognition. The table below presents the primary gender-neutral subject pronouns found in the French-speaking world.

{| class="wikitable"

|+

!

|-

!Dominant usage

|iel <small>[jɛl]</small>

|ille <small>[ij]</small><ref name=":5" />

|-

|ol

|ul

|}

French distinguishes between clitic and tonic pronouns. A clitic is a word that attaches in a syntactically rigid way to another word to form a prosodic unit with it, lacking prosodic as well as distributional autonomy.<ref name=":8">Michel, L./Levet, D. (2017): ''La catégorie de la personne''. Saint-Denis: MSH Paris Nord. Online at: https://web.ac-reims.fr/casnav/enfants_nouv_arrives/aide_a_la_scolarisation/LGIDF/LGIDF.LA%20PERSONNE.02.03.17.pdf (retrieved 15.12.2023).</ref> Currently, there is no prevailing gender-neutral clitic direct object personal pronoun; the most common ones are detailed below.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Clitic pronouns

!Subject

!Indirect object

|-

|il

|lui

|-

|+Analogical extension

!Clitic subject pronoun

|-

|il

|lui

|-

|elle

|-

|<u>ellui</u> <small>[ɛllɥi]</small>

|-

|eux

|-

|}

The distinction between 'analytic gender-neutral' ''versus'' 'synthetic gender-neutral' is usually referred to as 'inclusif' ''versus'' 'neutre'.<ref name=":0" /> Compounds — such as 'maon', from 'ma' and 'mon' — and portmanteau words, like 'utilisateurice', could be cognitively interpreted as neutral; at least, there have been no psycholinguistic studies disconfirming this, to the extent that these forms could technically also be called neutral. Furthermore, since gender-neutral forms are inherently inclusive of all genders, there is no reason why they cannot be called that way either. The subsequent interchangeability of these terms makes them unsuitable for differentiating these two methods of creating gender-neutral/gender inclusive words in French. For this reason, the following table distinguishes them based on their morphological properties — blend words being more analytical and non blend words being more synthetic.

!Masculine

!Feminine

!Synthetic gender-neutral

|-

A drawback of 'an' pronounced as [ɑ̃] is its nasality, a factor known for making vowels challenging to distinguish and learn, even for native French speakers.<ref>Sicard, E./Menin-Sicard, A./Rousteau, G. (2022): ''Oppositions de voyelles orales et nasales : identification des formants selon le genre''. INSA Toulouse: ffhal-03826558v2f.</ref> Consequently, [ɑ̃] might be perceived as a mispronunciation of 'un' or simply not distinct enough from 'un' to be recognized as a different morpheme.

{| class="wikitable"

!

!Feminine

!Analytic gender-neutral

|ma

|''maon'' <small>[maõ]</small>

|-

!2SG

|''tan'' <small>[tɑ̃]/[tan]</small>, ti(ne)

|-

|son

|sa

The pronunciation [sɑ̃] of 'san' is a homophone of 'sang' ('blood'). Alpheratz proposes 'mu(n)', 'tu(n)', 'su(n)'<ref name=":13" /> as synthetic forms. However, 'tu(n)' is a homophone of the subject pronoun 'tu', and <nowiki><u> — i. e. [y] — is a linguistically marked phone</nowiki>.<ref>Rice, K. (2007): Markedness in phonology. In: ''The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology'', 79–98. 10.1017/cbo9780511486371.005.</ref><ref>Carvalho, J. (2023): From binary features to elements: Implications for markedness theory and phonological acquisition. In: ''Radical: A Journal of Phonology'' ''3'', 346–384.</ref> Alternative forms could be 'mi(ne)', 'ti(ne)', 'sine', as only the roundness parameter (cf. [y] and [i] in the IPA) distinguishes them from the original neologisms from Alpheratz. 'sine' would be the only one without an optional '-ne' ending to avoid homophony with 'si' (i. e. 'if'). Similar-sounding possessive adjectives can be found in Spanish ('mi'), in English ('my'), in Swedish ('min', 'din', 'sin', the last one being a gender-neutral reflexive possessive pronoun),<ref>Duolingo Wiki: ''Swedish Skills. Possessives''. Online at:https://duolingo.fandom.com/wiki/Swedish_Skill:Possessives (18.12.2023).</ref> in Norwegian,<ref>Norwegian University of Science and Technology (no data): ''8 Grammar. Possessives''. Online at: https://www.ntnu.edu/now/8/grammar (retrieved 18.12.2023).</ref>  in Swiss-German,<ref>Klaudia, K. (2017): ''Schweizerdeutsch. Schlüssel zu den Übungen.'' Online at: https://silo.tips/download/schweizerdeutsch-schlssel-zu-den-bungen (retrieved 18.12.2023).</ref>  and in other Germanic languages. As 60% of of humans are multilingual,<ref>McGibney, S. (2023): ''What Percentage of the World’s Population is Bilingual? Introduction to Bilingualism: Exploring the Global Language Diversity''. Online at: https://www.newsdle.com/blog/world-population-bilingual-percentage (retrieved 18.12.2023).</ref> cross-linguistic influence could be used to facilitate the memorization and adoption of neologisms.<ref>Van Dijk, C./Van Wonderen, E./Koutamanis, E./Kootstra, G.J./Dijkstra, T./Unsworth, S. (2022): Cross-linguistic influence in simultaneous and early sequential bilingual children: a meta-analysis. In: ''J. Child Lang.'' ''49'', 897–929. 10.1017/S0305000921000337.</ref><ref>Van Dijk, C./Dijkstra, T./Unsworth, S. (2022): Cross-linguistic influence during online sentence processing in bilingual children. In: ''Bilingualism'' ''25'', 691–704. 10.1017/S1366728922000050.</ref>

{| class="wikitable"

!Masculine

!Analytic gender-neutral

!Synthetic gender-neutral

La vie en Queer proposes 'cet', which sounds the same as the feminine 'cette'; Divergenres retains 'cèx', but notes that it sounds like the word 'sexe'. A third possibility is to voice or to devoice the final consonant of the feminine word, for instance turning [t] to [d], or [g] to [k]. This would allow the word to remain easily recognizable while being distinct from both the masculine and  the feminine forms. This approach has the advantage of minimizing misunderstandings and memorization effort.

{| class="wikitable"

!

Currently, there is no established combination of definite article and possessive pronoun. In this table, the definite article "lae" is simply paired with the possessive pronoun "mienn" for morphological reasons, as both words are of the analytic gender-neutral type. This also applies to the definite article "lo" and the possessive pronoun "miem", both of which are of the synthetic type.

{| class="wikitable"

!

!Feminine

|-

!Singular

|}

{| class="wikitable"

!Feminine

!Analytic gender-neutral

|-

!aucun·e

The indefinite pronoun 'quelqu'une' is extremely rare in modern French and its pendant 'quelqu'un' not necessarily perceived as masculine, thus it is not clear how essential the degendering of this pronoun is.  

Words such as 'professionnel' and 'professionnelle', which are orally epicene and, thus, indistinguishable in speech, are not included; the use of their shortened doublet form enables inclusivity and gender-neutrality in written language.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Endings from Latin '-or' and '-rix'

!

!Masculine

!Analytic gender-neutral

!Synthetic gender-neutral

!-eur/-_resse²

|enchanteur

|''enchanteuresse''

|enchantaire

Synthetic gender-neutral forms have the advantage of preserving the original syllable number of the word, making them less cumbersome than analytic forms. Moreover, the '-aire' suffix does already exist in contemporary French, forming epicene nouns like 'un·e destinataire', 'un·e secrétaire', 'un·e volontaire', 'un·e bibliothécaire', etc. However, several psycholinguistic studies conducted in French<ref>Brauer, M./Landry, M. (2008): Un ministre peut-il tomber enceinte? L'impact du générique masculin sur les représentations mentales. In: ''L'Année Psychol''. ''108'', 243–272. 10.4074/S0003503308002030.</ref><ref>Xiao, H./Strickland, B./Peperkamp, S. (2023): How fair is gender-fair language? Insights from gender ratio estimations in French. In: ''J. Lang. Soc. Psychol''. ''42'', 82–106. 10.1177/0261927X221084643.</ref> and in German<ref>Stahlberg, D./Sczesny, S./Braun, F. (2001): Name your favorite musician: effects of masculine generics and of their alternatives in German. In: ''J. Lang. Soc. Psychol''. ''20'', 464–469. 10.1177/0261927X01020004004.</ref> have found that "gender-unmarked forms are not fully effective in neutralizing the masculine bias"<ref name=":15">Spinelli, E./Chevrot, J.-P./Varnet, L. (2023): Neutral is not fair enough: testing the efficiency of different language gender-fair strategies. In: ''Front. Psychol.'' ''14.'' 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1256779.</ref> and that "contracted double forms [such as acteur·ice] are more effective in promoting gender balance compared to gender-unmarked forms."<ref name=":15" /> Regarding this issue, specifically, analytic gender-neutral forms could then be a more effective solution than synthetic ones.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Endings from latin '-ōsus'<ref>CNRTL (2012): ''-EUX, élément formant''. Online at: https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/-eux (retrieved 15.12.2023).</ref>

!Synthetic gender-neutral

|-

|amoureux

|amoureuse

The synthetic gender-neutral forms in which the silent consonant of the masculine form becomes audible mantain the original number of syllables. They have an audible suffix, like the feminine forms do, without that suffix being the same as the feminine. This places them between the feminine and the masculine forms. Additionally, the fact that the audible consonant in gender-neutral form matches the consonant in the masculine suffix could facilitate the learning of these neologisms for literate French speakers. However, in cases where the masculine does not contain a silent <x> and the feminine has a distinctive suffix, such as with 'dieu, déesse', adopting the analytic approach may be more consistent in terms of spelling and inclusivity (see previous paragraph).

{| class="wikitable"

|-

!

!Masculine

!Synthetic gender-neutral

|-

!-ain/-aine

|écrivaine <small>[ekʁivɛ<u>n</u>]</small>

|écrivainn <small>[ekʁiv<u>ɛ̃n</u>]</small>

|''écrivan''

|-

|copain <small>[kɔp<u>ɛ̃</u>]</small>

|copine <small>[kɔpi<u>n</u>]</small>

|opportune <small>[ɔpɔʁty<u>n</u>]</small>

|opportunn <small>[ɔpɔʁt<u>œ̃n</u>]/[ɔpɔʁt<u>ɛ̃n</u>]</small>

|-

!-on/-onne

The '-aine' suffix has gained popularity. However, its use in monosyllabic words like 'brun·e' may hinder comprehension, which could explain why 'bran', a form that preserves the nasality of the final vowel while only changing its place of articulation, is more widespread. Words with a '-ien/-ienne' (and obviously also '-ain/-aine') suffix cannot form a synthetic gender-neutral form with '-aine', as this would result in a word pronounced exactly the same way as the feminine one (cf. 'citoyenne'). Here, the synthetical neutral forms created with '-an' only retain masculine phonetic traits (i. e. its manner of articulation — vocalic — and its nasality trait — which is positive). Theoretically, this could lead to similar issues as discussed in the Endings from Latin '-or' and '-rix' subchapter. The same could be true with synthetic gender-neutral forms ending in '-aine', but this time in favour of the feminine. However, even though the suffix '-aine' could sound feminine, the resulting form is still easily distinguishable from the original one, since the vowels implied are oral and not nasal, and can therefore be less easily mistaken for mispronunciations — while 'écrivan', 'citoyan' and 'bran' could be (for more information, see the Indefinite and definite article subchapter).

{| class="wikitable"

|+Endings with silent (♂︎) and audible consonant (♀︎)

!

!Feminine

!Analytic gender-neutral

|pâlode, pâlat, pâlasse

|-

|grand

|grande

|inquiète

|

|-

!-g/gue

|oblonk

|-

|premier <small>[pʁəmj<u>e</u>]</small>

|première <small>[pʁəmjɛ<u>ʁ</u>]</small>

As the table demonstrates, no approach has achieved widespread acceptance among this category of nouns and adjectives. As discussed in the Demonstrative adjective subchapter, one intuitive approach to creating a gender-neutral form involves making the silent consonant of the masculine form audible in the neologism while voicing or devoicing it, so that its pronunciation is different from the feminine form — e. g.: 'palôt' → 'palôte' (sounds like 'pâlotte') → 'pâlode' . However, masculine words ending in a silent <nowiki><s> pose a challenge: when put in the feminine form, the <s> can either become a voiced sibilant [z] or a voiceless sibilant [s] (the outcome [ʃ] is irrelevant in this issue). This inconsistency means that the silent <s> of the masculine form can represent either a voiced or a voiceless sound. While the silent consonants of other words can simply be transformed into their voiceless resp. voiced counterparts to differentiate them from the feminine, creating gender-neutral forms from words like "antillais·e" and "bas·e" requires more careful consideration. If the feminine form is pronounced with a [s], the pronunciation of the gender-neutral form must be [z] to avoid homophony; conversely, if the feminine form is pronounced [z], the gender-neutral form's pronunciation must be [s] to maintain distinctiveness.</nowiki>

{| class="wikitable"

|+Endings with a rounded vowel (♂︎) and '-_(l)le' (♀︎)

!

!Feminine

!Analytic gender-neutral

The pronunciation of /a/ as [ɔ] in Canadian French can lead to ambiguity in gender-neutral forms like 'spéciaules', as they could be interpreted as the feminine singular and plural, or masculine singular form of 'spécial·e'.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Masculine consonant X and feminin consonant X modified by '-e'

|-

!-c/-che

|sèche

|

|-

Florence Ashley argues that the order in which the feminine and masculine morphemes are combined does not matter.<ref name=":5" /> Usage, intelligibleness and personal preference ultimately determine which forms will gain traction. However, the prosodic sequencing of syllables in French can impact intelligibility. For instance, in the pronunciation of 'naïvif' (neutral form) as [na'i'<u>vif</u>], contrary to 'naïfive', the end of the word is acoustically identical to 'vif' (i. e. 'vivacious') and can thus lead to confusion.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Irregular substantives

!Masculine

!Feminine

!Synthetic gender-neutral

|-

|}

The neologisms that a primarily depicted here are the ones that either are analytical — as they have been shown to be cognitively more inclusive than some synthetic ones —, easier to pronounce, cross-linguistically relevant or the most widespread.

''"Lae maîtré accueillent les enfants et leur demande de prendre place. La leçon du jour concerne les métiers. L’instituteurice interroge les élèves sur leurs souhaits professionnels et les professions exercées par les membres de leur famille. An élève dans la deuxième rangée prend la parole :''

''An autre élève réagit :''

* Ce que tu es mignonn de penser que je suis vieilleux, moi, merci.

* Peut-être tes camarades peuvent te donner des idées.

* Mi voisinn, à moi, iel est enseignande de Yoruba, et parfois iel donne même des cours à domicile.

''Les élèves :''

According to linguist Roswitha Fischer, citing Renate Bartsch,<ref>Bartsch, R. (1987): ''Sprachnormen: Theorie und Praxis: Studienausgabe''. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110935875.</ref> the adoption of neologisms into a language's lexicon depends on three factors:

Currently, gender-neutral French neologisms lack widespread adoption, even within LGBT and nonbinary communities. Their presence is marginal in written form,<ref>Café aux étoiles. maison d'édition sereine et onirique (no data): ''Littérature''. Online at: https://cafeauxetoiles.fr/litterature/ (retrieved 18.12.2023).</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/ (retrieved 18.12.2023).</ref> and their usage in spoken language limited. However, the Internet serves as an area for these neologisms to reach a global audience of Francophone speakers from Africa, America, Europe, and minority language communities all around the world. Additionally, descriptive approaches to language (cf. ''Le Robert''), contrary to prescriptive approaches (cf. L'Académie), have lead to the acceptance of one of them — 'iel' — in written discourse.

For neologisms to gain wider adoption, they must be learnable and user-friendly. This means they should be easy to understand and easy to remember (due to morphological motivation); easy to pronounce while adhering to the phoneme inventory and phonotactics of the language; familiar to the target audience; and responsive to a genuine need.<ref name=":16" /> If these criteria are met, neologisms will start being adopted by avant-garde language users. As these avant-garde figures gather large online communities, the frequency of usage of these neologisms will increase, fostering familiarity among the Francophone community. From then, some of these neologisms could potentially enter the standard vocabulary.

<references />

[[Category:Gender neutral language]]