Feminism and Gender-Neutral Language: Between Systems and Effects

Abstract

The debate on language and gender in Slovenia raises the issue of gender-sensitive language use, which goes far beyond mere equality and inclusiveness in language use. While the establishment of (gender) identity in language is related to the theoretical question of the social construction of gender, ensuring gender equality in language is also a matter that requires social engagement in various fields, especially including various segments of the education system. As the first public debate on this issue – organised by the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, on 23 October 2018, following attempts to reduce gender inequality in legal documents adopted by the Faculty – showed, the approach to language and gender will necessarily be interdisciplinary. Linguistic considerations call for a shift in emphasis from vocabulary and address code (available resources) to arguments of morphosyntactic form and, in particular, to the symbolic structure of linguistic signs, taking into account relevant contributions from other research areas that have understood the attribution of gender – even sex – as a socially determined decision (e.g. Butler, 2001 /1990/, 1993). Since we are, at this point, particularly interested in the impact of gender-sensitive language use on the discursive level, we argue that the essence of the effort to make language more inclusive – with an emphasis on discourse in education – is not to offer, authorise and institutionalise individual solutions and strategies under the auspices of the language authorities, but to understand gender-sensitive language use as a multiplicity of micro-politics and as a continuous process that leads us to re-examine linguistic “facts” in relation to a given social context.