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La Cervantina is the Spanish team of writers. And it is well said that way.
This example can help us analyze a subtlety that is sometimes overlooked when analyzing the issue of generics.
The key is that absence in the signifier does not always imply absence in the signified. What is not named does exist… as long as certain circumstances are met. It all depends on the contexts and the common encyclopedia that the interlocutors use.
Cervantina obtained the runner-up position in the Writers’ National Team Euro Cup held in Germany from June 7 to 9. And that being said, the unaware public will have perceived the idea of a men’s tournament. Because? Because we are influenced by the general knowledge of the world that we apply to each situation. The generic that we observe in “writers’ selections” evokes groups of men because it is contaminated with the latent word “football”, which is also perceived – within “European Championship” – although it has not been used. The historical confluence of all these terms, as long as nothing else is specified, leads to imagining groups made up of men. Because? Because our encyclopedia does not have recorded the existence of soccer teams made up of adults of both sexes, and projects the closest decoding onto the message: it is a men’s team.
If La Cervantina had been defined, in the same way, as a “Spanish selection of writers”, the authors who had been playing on the team would have disappeared from the message. (Carmen Berasategui, Marta San Miguel and Olga Capdevila). Therefore, duplication is necessary so that the image intuitively constructed by the receiver is broken and replaced by the one that faithfully transmits reality.
The same thing would not happen if I said to a friend: “The publishers have done a selection of writers so they can sign at the fair.” We will both understand that male and female authors fall into that group. Therefore, such a phrase in itself does not convey any discriminatory bias. It simply activates a communication gear that we apply unconsciously. The same thing that would occur if we said that “Spain has two candidates for an Olympic medal in rhythmic gymnastics.” Although “two aspirants” does not express gender, we do decode, in the realm of meaning, the exclusive presence of the female sex. There our knowledge of the world drives the image of female gymnasts, since this competition does not welcome men. For decades the same thing will have happened with headlines like “great Spanish triumph in synchronized swimming”, since we always saw female swimmers in this discipline. Only since 2015 have men participated in non-Olympic competitions; and even so, a large part of the public will continue to reduce that expression to women, because they have not yet changed their encyclopedia.
That is why it is so important to understand that sexist biases are not found in generic expressions, but in the reality that we project onto them. When we manage to change reality, everything that its generics communicate is changed. Thus, in the expression “Council of Ministers” there is no need to elaborate if it refers to that of Spain, because the common encyclopedia of Spaniards today projects the image of some ministers on the meaning of that generic term.
The duplication “Congress of Deputies” is now unnecessary. The duplication of the “Spanish selection of writers” is still essential.
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FAITH OF ERRORS. The initial version of this article contained a repeated paragraph. It has been corrected after the notice of reader Alonso Quijano.
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