Neither “girls”, nor “chicxs”, nor “chic@s”. In the schools of the Argentine capital, teachers will no longer be able to use these gender-neutral expressions, popular among the youth, to communicate with their students.
The government of the city of Buenos Aires issued a resolution in June that limits the use of the so-called “inclusive language” in initial, primary and secondary education.
The decision prohibits the gender-neutral endings “e”, “x” or “@” from being used in institutional communications and from being taught as part of the educational curriculum.
It also requires that these be carried out “in accordance with the rules of the Spanish language.”
In justifying the norm, the Buenos Aires authorities made reference to the low results obtained by the students of the Argentine capital in the last reading and writing evaluations.
“The deformation of the use of language has a negative impact on learning, especially considering the consequences of the pandemic,” they assured from the Buenos Aires Ministry of Education.
“It is very important to clarify well and simplify learning,” reiterated the mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, after the rain of criticism that the measure received.
The resolution clarifies that the prohibition “applies only to the content dictated by teachers in class, to the material that is given to students and to official documents from educational establishments,” and that students may continue to use inclusive language. among them.
He even recognizes that it is important “to break with the sexist notions that enable the use of the generic masculine and incorporate a more inclusive language.”
But he assures that “the Spanish language offers many options to be inclusive without the need to distort the language, or add complexity to reading comprehension and fluency.”
To emphasize the latter, the government released a “practice guide and recommendations for inclusive communication.”
However, the announcement received much criticism from some educators, linguists and even from the national education minister, whose government is politically opposed to that of the city of Buenos Aires and supports the use of inclusive language.
Several highlighted that there is no evidence that the use of inclusive language has been related to low test results.
“It cannot be forced, much less the use and customs in the language can be prohibited,” said Buenos Aires deputy Alejandrina Barry, who presented a project in the local Legislature to repeal the norm.
What caused the most discomfort was Acuña’s announcement that whoever does not comply with the rule will face “an administrative disciplinary process.”
Rejection
However, the Argentine capital is not the only one that has spoken out against the use of so-called “language with a gender perspective.”
As cited in its foundations the Buenos Aires norm, one of the first to reject these new neutral terms was what is considered by many to be the highest reference of the Spanish language: the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE).
In 2020, in response to a request from the then Spanish vice president to modify the Constitution to make it more inclusive, the RAE published a 156-page report explaining its rejection of inclusive language.
“The use of the ‘@’ or the letters ‘e’ and ‘x’ as alleged marks of inclusive gender is alien to the morphology of Spanish,” the RAE concluded categorically.
In addition, he declared himself against the proposal to replace the generic use of the grammatical masculine – which the most critical consider the “symbolic brick of patriarchy” – with more inclusive forms.
“It is unnecessary, because the generic masculine does not hide the presence of the woman, but rather includes her with the same right as the man,” he assured.
Since the publication of that report, the RAE has maintained its position.
At the end of 2021, consulted on Twitter by a user about inclusive language, he defined it as “a set of strategies that aim to avoid the generic use of the grammatical masculine, a mechanism firmly established in the language and that does not imply sexist discrimination. some”.
Latin America
Although the announcement from the city of Buenos Aires captured media attention, the truth is that the Argentine capital was not the first in the region to seek to limit the teaching of gender-neutral language.
Last January, shortly before classes began in the south of the American continent, Uruguay took a similar step when it published a circular stating that in the field of public education the use of inclusive language “must conform to the rules of the language Spanish”.
The order issued by the National Administration of Public Education (ANEP) indicates that “inclusive expressions” can be used “as long as those are complied with.”
Like the Buenos Aires resolution, the ANEP clarified that its instructions are aimed at teaching and non-teaching officials and do not affect the forms of expression of students.
Strictly speaking, this regulation was an update of another similar resolution that the body had already issued in 2019.
Beyond the educational authorities, there have been other attempts to stop the progress of inclusive language in schools and other environments in Uruguay.
Last April, deputies from the Cabildo Abierto right-wing party presented a bill to prohibit “grammatical and phonetic alterations” in the public administration and in public and private educational centers.
“The purpose of the same is that words are not modified to make them ‘inclusive’ with the E, the X or @”, specified the deputy Inés Monzillo on her Twitter account.
“Let’s speak our language correctly,” he said about his project, which generated “concern” on the part of the Teachers’ Association of the University of the Republic (ADUR).
Other countries in the region, such as Chile, have also seen the emergence of legislative proposals that seek to stop the progress of inclusive language.
France
But Spanish is not the only language that differentiates between masculine and feminine, and that has seen the emergence of new (and controversial) neutral expressions that seek to make it more inclusive.
And it is not the only language that the most purist authorities have tried to “preserve” from the inclusive language.
In fact, the country that has most strongly lowered its thumb for now to language with a gender perspective is France.
There it was the Minister of National Education himself, Jean-Michel Blanquer, who signed a circular in May 2021 that prohibits the use of inclusive writing in class.
Unlike what happens in Spanish with the endings “e”, “x” or “@”, in French the most used tool to impart neutrality is a midpoint (•).
This is used to give a word both masculine and feminine endings, simultaneously.
Take for example the word “amis” (friends). The inclusive way of writing it would be: “ami•e•s”, which combines the masculine version (“ami”) with the feminine (“amies” or friends).
It would be something similar to the Spanish “amigos/as”.
Blanquer prohibited the use of the midpoint in schools arguing that “the impossibility of orally transcribing texts with this type of spelling hinders both reading aloud and pronunciation and, consequently, learning, especially for the little ones” .
In addition, the minister pointed out that “it constitutes an obstacle to access to the language of minors who face certain disabilities or learning disorders.”
It is an argument similar to the one used by some critics of the inclusive Spanish language, who claim that it makes reading difficult for people with dyslexia or the blind, and therefore, rather than including, “excludes”.
Like the Buenos Aires rule, the French ban did not reject all inclusive language, but sought to promote other ways of generating inclusivity, recommending, among other things, “the use of the feminization of trades and functions” .
However, the French authorities made their opposition to the use of gender-neutral words clear when, at the end of 2021, the well-known Petit Robert dictionary included the pronoun “iel”, which combines “he” and “she” and is widely used. by people of non-binary gender.
Not only Blanquer shouted to heaven, but also the French first lady, Brigitte Macron, got involved in the controversy, stating that two pronouns were enough.
“Tongue in Motion”
Despite the resistance, there are many who assure that the limitations and prohibitions will not be able to prevent inclusive language from being imposed.
The editors of the famous French dictionary themselves explained, in the face of controversy, that they were simply reflecting a phenomenon that already exists.
“Le Robert’s mission is to observe and report on the evolution of a diverse, moving French language,” they explained in a statement.
Even the RAE itself recognized that, ultimately, the language that is imposed is the one that is spoken on a day-to-day basis and not the one that they dictate.
“It is opportune to remember that the grammatical or lexical changes that have triumphed in the history of our language have not been directed from superior instances, but have arisen spontaneously among the speakers”, he pointed out in his report on inclusive language.
“It is the latter who promote and adopt linguistic innovations that only sometimes achieve success and become widespread,” he clarified.
During a recent visit to Chile, the director of that academic institution, Santiago Muñoz Machado, reiterated this idea, stating that “it is the citizens, by using the language, who establish the rules.”
In an interview with the Chilean newspaper El Tiempo, Muñoz Machado also admitted that “the RAE is always a little behind the citizens.”
For her part, the renowned Argentine writer Claudia Piñeiro, who in 2019 was one of the first literary personalities to defend the use of inclusive language during a speech she gave at the International Congress of the Spanish Language, considered that trying to regulate it is futile.
“Wanting to ban a language is like trying to grab water with a strainer,” he said after the announcement by the Buenos Aires government.
Piñeiro, who in his speech recognized that only “in the future” will we know if the inclusive language will end up being “adopted by the Spanish language”, also observed that the prohibitions will surely have the opposite effect to the desired one and end up making more young people want to use it.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-61916860, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-06-30 11:00:07
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