What does science say
Far from being limited to the use of the midpoint, the use of inclusive type actually has an impact on the reader’s mental representation, as recent French work concluded. Importantly, this effect varies depending on the type of inclusive writing used.
“Mortal danger“French language of the French Academy or”Essential tool“According to the investigation They create the culture With the support of the Ministry of Culture, Comprehensive Writing Breaks. “Our goal is to bring a little science back into this debate that sometimes spirals out of control“, points out Leo Varnet, psycholinguist at the National Center for Scientific Research. Far from being limited to the use of the midpoint, the use of inclusive writing actually has an impact on the reader’s mental representation, as recent French work published in the journal concluded Frontiers in psychology. Importantly, this effect varies depending on the type of inclusive writing used.
Universal writing (indefinite gender), or dual forms, has multiple aspects
-
Experts meet
-
Specialists meet
-
Experts meet
-
Experts meet
These four sentences have a similar meaning, but only the last three use inclusive writing. “Experts” use the generic masculine gender to designate a potential mixed group. “Specialists” is the so-called “epicene” term, meaning indeterminate genus. The last two are called the “double form” because they mention both the masculine and feminine forms of the word.
“About thirty scientific articles analyze the effects of comprehensive writing on mental representations“, explains Leo Varnet, co-author of this new work. They all agree on the fact that the general masculine leads to masculine rather than feminine representations, and that this bias is diminished by using Ibsenian terminology. In other words, reading “experts” will evoke in the reader’s imagination a group of men more spontaneously than epic “specialists.” But so far, the data have not allowed us to determine whether the dual model corrected for this bias more effectively.
Neutral is not neutral
At CNR Laboratories[…]
Read more at sciencesetavenir.fr
Read also
“Organizer. Social media geek. General communicator. Bacon scholar. Proud pop culture trailblazer.”