Switzerland also debates the use of inclusive language in schools | Conservative sectors want plebiscite to ban it

The debate on the use of inclusive language goes around the world and overtakes the Castilian and the reluctant Royal Spanish Academy (RAE). the The Swiss government uses it’s been years neutral terms in your communications and plan to include it in textbooks, but the conservative and right-wing sectors of the opposition are pushing an initiative to reject non-binary language through a plebiscite.

Since the 1990s, the Swiss government has been inclined, wherever possible, to use neutral terms. But the coexistence of different languages ​​on the same territory – German, French and Italian are spoken, in addition to Romansh, depending on the cantons – complicates the situation because in French, Italian and German grammars, the masculine plural has the preference over the feminine when referring to a group of women and men.

The solution they found was use periods and asterisks in words indicating gender, as it was done in Castilian with the at and the x replacing the “a” or the “o”. For example, in the French official texts, the term “électorate”, “the electorate” replaced “the voters and the élé proper”, respectively in the masculine and the feminine. But now other neutral forms appear like “the elector.rice.s”.

In recent months, the French-speaking Swiss public television (RTS) has fueled the controversy by replacing “good evening to all” (“good night to all”) by “good evening and welcome”, a neutral form which could be translated in Spanish as “good night and we welcome you “.

The Swiss government also plans introduce neutral terms in textbooks in a reform planned for 2023 which would affect the French-speaking cantons.

The opposition

As in Argentina, the shift towards non-sexist language has its detractors. Benjamin Roduit, member of the Christian Democratic Party (center), presented in March a motion to ask the Swiss federal administration to respect the rules of the French language “without repealing them in favor of a so-called ‘inclusive’ writing”.

Aurèle Challet, president of the Swiss section for the Defense of the French language (DLF), wants to convene a national convention of the French language in Switzerland and collect signatures to hold a public vote on the issue.

For Challet, putting periods between the letters is “incoherent, ineffective, ugly and will bring nothing to this legitimate fight, which I support, on the role of women in society”.

Opposition to inclusive language has manifested itself not only in French, but also in German. In June, the Swiss Federal Chancellery has banned the use of asterisks and other typographical signs to include masculine, feminine and non-binary persons in the same word.

For example, for the word citizens (masculine “burgers” and feminine “burgerinnen”), “burger * innen” and “burger: innen” were used to include non-binary citizens. All of that has been eliminated.

In Germany, the Minister of the Interior, the Bavarian Conservative Horst Seehofer, rejected a bill because it was written in the feminine.

you in favor

Pascal Gygax, psycholinguist at the University of Friborg and author of the book “Does the brain think male?” advocates changes in writing, even in the classroom.

“We see a society beginning to realize patriarchal power […] that everything revolves around men: from the schoolyard to the way we dress or talk. The language issue is part of a movement that seeks more equality, ”he said.

For Janna Kraus, of the organization Transgender Network Switzerland (TGNS), “the existence of people who are neither men nor women is not a subject of discussion, it is a social and scientific fact and it has no sense in disguising it linguistically “.

What is happening at the local level?

In Argentina, non-sexist language is more widely accepted at the institutional level. A year ago, the Central Bank presented a guide for the use of inclusive language in the official communication of the entity; The National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) has also prepared an inclusive language manual which “does not have a sanctioning or restrictive character, but rather seeks to be a guide, a useful working tool with a gender perspective”.

At the provincial level, the Ministry of Women, Gender Policy and Sexual Diversity of Buenos Aires, headed by Estela Díaz, is working on an inclusive language guide for the entire public administration with the aim of “making all visible and inclusive people ”.

Universities were not far behind. Already in 2019, the National University of Patagonia San Juan Bosco, the University of Mar del Plata, the National University of Cordoba, the University of Buenos Aires, the National University of Rosario and the National University of San Martín have accepted inclusive language in oral and written productions.

At the judicial level, too, inclusive language has started to be used. In January 2020, Judge Elena Liberatori rendered a decision urging the government of Buenos Aires to repair a work where, according to the text, a woman was living with her two “children”.

At the local level, opponents of non-sexist language are concentrated in conservative sectors. In June of this year, attorneys Cynthia Roxana Ginni and Patricia Alejandra Patternesi introduced a bill to Congress to ban inclusive language “in all its forms (‘x’, ‘e’, ​​’@’ , etc.), used to replace the masculine when used in a generic sense ”. The initiative has the support of constitutionalist Félix V. Lonigro, a staunch opponent of the gender perspective, the law on voluntary termination of pregnancy and the law on gender equity in the media.

The RAE, for its part, called inclusive language “unnecessary”. Previously, he had removed the pronoun “they” from his Observatory of Words, where he retained words such as “feminazi”, “cyberattack”, “mutear”, “video call”, “spoiler” and “guglear”.

Despite this, various institutions at the international level encourage the use of non-sexist language. The United Nations (UN) has a guide in which they recommend the use of gender neutral terms in English in communications inside and outside the organization, as well as a guide. Other agencies such as UNHCR also have a similar tool.