Image Courtesy of BoldLatina.com
While universities in the United States have adopted the use of they/them pronouns in classrooms to account for non-binary, gender-queer, and gender nonconforming students and staff, Spanish and Portuguese instructors are facing their own conundrum. Romance languages are gendered languages, meaning that almost all words have a masculine or feminine gender. While grammatical gender can be arbitrary and not reflective of human gender (for example, el dinero in Spanish or, o dinheiro in Portuguese are masculine but money is not a human with the capacity to have or express gender), many words are tied directly to human gender constructs. For example, “the student” according to normative grammar, must either be masculine; “el estudiante” (Spanish), “o estudante” (Portuguese); or feminine; “la estudiante” (Spanish) or “a estudante” (Portuguese). This strict gender divide poses an issue for nonbinary individuals both in Hispanic and Lusophone communities, but also for students in Spanish and Portuguese language classrooms in the United States. While nonbinary language is slowly gaining traction in Hispanic and Lusophone countries, its implementation has been met with heated debate. With debate strong abroad about the use of nonbinary language in Portuguese and Spanish, what is the responsibility of foreign language instructors here in the United States? This post explores the debate in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula about the use of genderless language, as well linguistic theory and philosophy, in order to inform the argument that Spanish and Portuguese instructors in the U.S., should incorporate genderless language in the United States.
I first want to state, that while fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, I am not a native speaker and it is truly not my desire to opine on the current debate occurring between native speakers, rather, I want to focus on the benefits of including genderless language in the foreign language classroom.
The debate in Hispanic and Lusophone communities around genderless is certainly polemic. The champions of genderless language are mostly youths, especially those belonging to queer communities. In place of the -o and -a masculine and feminine endings, genderless language utilizes -@, -x, or -e alongside modified genderless pronouns. Those who utilize genderless language and advocate for it, belief that 1.) Romance languages for their default to masculine are inherently sexist and 2.) that language should be modified to make space for woman and nonbinary individuals. There is a great deal of protest art from places like Argentina, Brasil, and Uruguay that depict genderless language. However, POSE, the Netflix series highlighting queer identities, is the first series to debut subtitles in Spanish and Portuguese with genderless subtitles, giving more visibility to the linguistic cause.
Whereas many youths are utilizing genderless language, the larger Lusophone and Hispanic society has been hostile to the change. Many of these communities have strong roots in conservative judeo-christian ideologies, which tend to reject gender expressions outside of the binary. Additionally, there is a fair amount of backlash to the claims that Spanish is inherently sexist, which can be epitomized by peruvian poet Mario Vargas Llosa, who has become a defender of gendered language in Spanish. Vargas Llosa said in an interview, “Denaturalizing language because it is considered sexist is a stupidity which I will not support in any way” (Translation my own) (Milenio). While Vargas Llosa’s rhetoric is more intense, language reforms across Lusophone and Hispanic organizations seem to agree, with many, like the government of Chile, for example, advocating for “inclusive language”. “Inclusive language” minimizes the use of definite articles when necessary and uses circumlocutionary language to avoid emphasizing gender. This philosophy has taken off, while genderless language has been villanized, such as in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where it has been banned across the city, particularly in the educational system. It has also been banned in the classrooms of Uruguay and Rondônia, Brasil and 34 other bills have been proposed throughout Brasil to prohibit genderless language in classrooms (BBC). Llosa and other defenders of traditional grammar conventions have pointed out that the -@ and the -X ending are foreign constructions to Spanish. Understanding that they cannot be pronounced, certainly renders his point true. However, far more powerful than individuals like Vargas Llosa is the Real Academia Espanola (RAE), or the Royal Spanish Academy, which is the body that governs the Spanish language. The RAE has vehemently rejected any the use of genderless langauge, stating that “the use of the @ or the letters “e” and “x” as supposed marks of gender inclusivity are foreign to Spanish morphology, and in addition to being unnecessary, the grammatical masculine already meets this function” (translation my own) (RAE).
As the situation in Latin America is quite heated and is currently developing, the Spanish and Portuguese instructors in the Foreign Language classroom in the U.S. are faced with a predicament: Whether or not to implement genderless language in our classroom for our students. There is an obvious need for genderless language, for the presence of nonbinary students in our classrooms. Those students deserve to be referred to how they wish in a way that honors and affirms their identity in the language that they are learning.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of clarity on how instructors, or if they should at all, implement gender neutral language in their curriculum. Many universities and schools strictly follow the RAE, meaning they are likely to refrain from incorporating it into their curriculum. Others follow the American Council on Foreign Language (ACTFL), the premier language pedagogical institute in the U.S., which is yet to make any sort of statement on the matter. Those who follow ACTFL or are simply waiting for some sort of definitive decision to arise out of the debate in Hispanic and Lusophone countries, are simply waiting and hoping for further instruction.
The American Association for Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) are of the same mindset, believing that the Spanish and Portuguese language classrooms are places for students to explore gender inclusive language and disavow any attempts at prohibiting such language (AATSP). There are teachers who want to teach gender inclusive language, but due to a lack of department support, or a lack of resources, or state curriculum, are not able to. Yet, there are teachers who do in fact teach gender inclusive language to their students. Many well meaning professors here in the United States, utilize the -X ending to denote gender neutrality, and while the effort comes from a good place, it fails to address the un-pronouncability of this construction, and the many colonialist accusations against it. As the -X ending is primarily used in the U.S. by non-native speakers, whereas the -e structure is mostly used Hispanic and Lusophone countries, it has been understood by Latinos as being a colonialist grammatical structure imposed on the Spanish language by outsiders.
I am of the mindset that all of this context and nuance provides a great learning opportunity. By teaching genderless language, it’s debates, and it’s complexities, we go beyond just honoring our students identities and giving visibility to queer identity (which is incredibly important in and of itself). In addition, we help students to understand what one of my professors, Jean-Michel Mabeko once told me, “Language is a living museum.” Language gives us an insight to the cultures, ideologies, tendencies and histories of those who speak it’s language, and a lot can be learned about a people, simply from studying their language. I believe that studying genderless language and the debates over it’s validity are examples for students to interrogate cultural and historical constructions of gender that are related to religion and colonialization. In the meantime, they come to understand important linguistic principles. For example, genderless language serves as a case study for Chomsky’s idea of prescriptivism, that is, that there is no right or wrong use of language, nor can language be governed by rules. Rather, according to Chomsky, every language has its own variants and currents based on geography, race, socio-economic status, and even gender, and there is no “proper” or “more correct” form of any given language. It is through this debate, that students will also come to know that language is not static, instead it is an ever evolving system of meaning and communication.
This viewpoint is affirmed by researchers María Luisa Parra and Ellen J Serafini who conclude after their investigation into the topic that:
“As instructors of Spanish, it is our responsibility to give students access to different perspectives about the LI (target language) and present it as part of historical, social, and cultural processes that search for the design and implementation of equitable politics, inclusion and belonging at every level (Rivera Alfaro 2019) and in all contexts including the language classes (ACTFL 2019)...and as Valle (2018) highlights, we should address all forms of exclusion, discrimination, and violence--verbal and non verbal-- that are codificied in many forms in our culture, linguistic expressions, attitudes, social expectations, and behaviors.”
In conclusion then, while giving visibility to queer identities, and giving students the tools to refer to themselves in others in a way that is true to them, including genderless language in the Spanish and Portuguese curriculums in the U.S. give students an opportunity to critically engage with culture and history and come to understand how language intersects with them. I believe it is my duty to equip my students with these priceless resources and knowledge.
Works Cited
Digital, Milenio. “Mario Vargas Llosa: La Vez Que Se Burló Del Lenguaje Inclusivo: Video.” Grupo Milenio, Grupo Milenio, 25 Aug. 2021, https://www.milenio.com/cultura/mario-vargas-llosa-burlo-lenguaje-inclusivo-video.
“GUÍA DE LENGUAJE INCLUSIVO DE GÉNERO.” Consejo Nacional De La Cultura y Las Artes.
Hauth, Patrick. “AATSP Releases Statement on Teaching Inclusive Spanish and Portuguese.” AATSP, American Association for Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, 22 Feb. 2022, https://www.aatsp.org/news/596362/AATSP-Releases-Statement-on-Teaching-Inclusive-Spanish-and-Portuguese.htm.
Iglesias, Mariana. “Opinión | La Prohibición Del Lenguaje Inclusivo En Argentina Invisibiliza a Las Diversidades.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 22 June 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/es/post-opinion/2022/06/23/prohibicion-lenguaje-inclusivo-gobierno-argentina-diversidades/.
“Informe De La Real Academia Española Sobre El Lenguaje Inclusivo y Cuestiones Conexas.” La Real Academia Española.
“Menine, Meninx Ou Menin@: Os Países Onde Linguagem Neutra Enfrenta Resistência.” BBC News Brasil, BBC, 6 July 2022, https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-62025281.
Parra, María Luisa, and Ellen J Serafini. “‘Bienvenidxs Todes’: El Lenguaje Inclusivo Desde Una Perspectiva Crítica Para Las Clases De Español.” Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, vol. 8, no. 2, 2021, pp. 143–160., https://doi.org/10.1080/23247797.2021.2012739.
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