Excessiveness in a German Social Media Debate on Gender-fair Language

Abstract

Gender-fair language is a contested topic in contemporaryGermany. Many reports on the introduction of language changes meantto reduce discrimination result in heated debates in print, online andsocial media.In this article, I qualitatively analyse a selected debate on gender-fairlanguage on Twitter to find out how excessive the language use is andwho makes use of what kind of excessive language. The time frame ofanalysis covers a critical discourse moment in 2018 during which theCouncil for German Orthography for the first time dealt with new gen-der-fair spelling variants. Since the Council, being the only official lan-guage planning institution for German, publishes the official regulationson orthography valid in schools and administrative bodies in Germany,its decision was highly anticipated and disputed.The analysed debate contained only a few argumentative exchangeson the topic. In general, it can be said that Twitter was mostly used to takea stance, not to engage in discussions. The overall style of the debate waspolemic and exhibited many and various instances of excessive languageuse, mostly by opponents of gender-fair language. This group made useof vulgar language, pejoratives and in some cases direct insults. Theyespecially questioned their adversaries’ mental health. Only a few pro-ponents used excessive language when they insinuated a lack of mentalcapacity in their adversaries.