Challenges of adopting gender–inclusive language in Slovene

Abstract

Th is paper presents the challenges of introducing gender-inclusive language in Slovene in last two decades. Within this scope we focus on the progressive developments in the sphere of adopting gender-inclusive language and present the entire background as well as the counter-forces (and their line of argumentation), working to eradicate the eff orts for employing gender-inclusive language in the Slovenian society. We thus present the main tendencies as well as linguistic elements aiming to facilitate gender-inclusive language in the Slovenian society, focusing mainly on the use of the underscore within our analysis. We analyze two manually constructed corpora with texts harvested from Slovenian websites of the organizations that use the underscore in order to employ genderinclusive language. We show that the use of the underscore is continually growing, in spite of the eff orts to downplay its value by challenging its usability and ubiquity.

Attitudes Toward Gender-Neutral Spanish: Acceptability and Adoptability

“…In other languages, such as Slovene, the use of gender-inclusive forms is widespread only in the LGBTIQ + community and some specific cultural/media outlets. Within these groups, the use of non-binary forms is remarkably consistent, even presenting some level of variation that has been interpreted as index of linguistic vitality (Popic and Gorjanc, 2018).…”

Language, gender and political symbolics: Insights from citizen digital discourses on gender‐sensitive language in Serbia

“…Slavic‐language societies in Eastern Europe have led specific debates on linguistic gender asymmetries, given the particularly rich morphology of all Slavic languages, which opens more difficult questions on language reform and policy (Arsenijević, 2018; Popič & Gorjanc, 2018; Bertoša & Pišković, 2018). Before we turn to these on the example of Serbian, however, it is important to acknowledge the geopolitical context in which these debates are imbricated, one that is not merely an extreme case in the global anti‐gender movement.…”

Gender specification of Polish nouns naming people: language system and public debate arguments

“…The standard language ideology informs but also empowers arguments that encourage observing the rules of grammar which are represented as 'traditional' (see the similar context of the Slovenian language as described by Popič and Gorjanc, 2018). In fact, the language-related appeal to the historical significance of one form or another may be misleading (or plain manipulative), as usage over the decades has inevitably been changing, and the argument will always be based on the arbitrary choice of the linguist who makes it.…”

“…In fact, the language-related appeal to the historical significance of one form or another may be misleading (or plain manipulative), as usage over the decades has inevitably been changing, and the argument will always be based on the arbitrary choice of the linguist who makes it. However, as Popič and Gorjanc (2018) show for the case of Slovenian, the linguistically grounded argument is "linked to other ideological positions within society that contradict equality (…)" (Popič and Gorjanc, 2018, p. 331), and is only apparently supported by linguistic reasons.…”

“…This is also the case in Polish, with a possibility to use gender indefinite forms (nouns such as personel [staff]) or the descriptive phrases including the gender-neutral noun osoba [person] (e.g. osoba kierująca samochodem [driver]), although 5 Where suffixation processes are complex and often blocked by morphological and phonotactic obstacles, graphemic marking may be applied to mark gender inclusivity in writing, for example the slash (der/die Lehrer/in), capital letters (einE LehrerIn) (Hellinger and Pauwels, 2007, p. 663), the underscore (Popič and Gorjanc, 2018) and the asterisk (Johnson, 2019). See also Steinhauber and Diewald, 2017, p. 46-47. these are admittedly rather long and sometimes clumsy.…”