Vol. 40 No. 1 (2020)
Articles

Linguistic relativity, gender grammar and inclusive language: some considerations

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  • Carolina Scotto,
  • Diana I. Pérez
Carolina Scotto
UNC-IDH-CONICET
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.2020.318

Published 2020-05-01

Keywords

  • Hipótesis de la relatividad lingüística,
  • Gramáticas de género,
  • Carga de género,
  • Genérico masculino,
  • Lenguaje inclusivo
  • Hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity,
  • Gender Grammar,
  • Gender-loaded language,
  • Generic Male,
  • Inclusive Language
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

In this paper, we examine a case of application of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity (HLR): the influence of the grammatical gender of languages on the cognition or thinking of speakers. Since languages differ both in their lexical repertoires, but, specially, in their gender grammars to refer to people, other animated beings and even inanimate entities, our purpose will be, first, to review the recent experimental evidence that would support the HLR on this domain, because they verify a variety of cognitive and psychological impacts, variable according to the languages of the speakers. In particular, we will identify what are the “relativist effects” in the case of morphosyntactic features of gender-loaded languages and in a relation to the universalization of the male gender. Based on the evaluation carried out and incorporating the contributions of “gender and language” studies of feminist approaches, we will conclude by pointing out in what ways it is viable and important to promote inclusive uses of language and even deeper changes towards an inclusive language, with special reference to Spanish.

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