The offensive of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires once morest the use of inclusive language in the schools aroused rejections in the world of letters. “The linguistic evolution of a community cannot be twisted by decree”, they told Page 12 specialists, while the Departmental Board of the Letters career of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) warned that “the intention to prohibit linguistic uses it is political and far from guaranteeing freedom“. The publishers that in recent years began to use and thematize the use of inclusive language also came out to repudiate the decision of the Buenos Aires Ministry of Education by stating, among other points, that “sanctions the right to be and be named as one wishes“.
Santiago Kalinowski is the protagonist of one of the central books on the rise of the use of inclusive language in recent years: The disputed language: a debate on inclusive languageedited by Godot, which recovers the exchange of ideas that Kalinowski had with Beatrice Sarlo within the framework of the 2019 Publishers Fair. Three years later, consulted by Page 12 Regarding the measure adopted by the Buenos Aires government, Kalinowski was emphatic in pointing out that “language is not prohibited”.
“The emblematic case of prohibition is that of the voseo during the 20th century. At school they were taught to talk regarding you, a conjugation that is foreign. And the prohibition of voseo is the example that linguistic evolution cannot be twisted by decree of a community, that it is not something governable“, assured the linguist and director of the Department of Linguistic and Philological Research of the Argentine Academy of Letters, although he clarified that it does not express the institutional position of the Academy. Unlike the voseo, Kalinowski added, the inclusive constitutes “a explicit intervention phenomenon of certain words to spread the idea that there is an injustice in society in relation to gender and challenge other people. It is not a phenomenon of linguistic change as we know it but of a political nature.“.
In this sense, the linguist also likened the prohibition of the inclusive to that of lunfardo, understood as “the result of contact between Spanish and many other languages of immigrants who also arrived with political ideas that put the conservative order at risk. The ban on lunfardo is explained by the fact that the ruling classes interpreted those speech features with those actors. With inclusive language, being political, it is similar, it is prohibited because it is associated with putting an order at risk. In that sense, the ban is also very political.“.
The Arts career of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UBA was also expressed in a similar way. The Departmental Board of the race warned in a document that “the uses of the language are always political in the broadest and strongest sense of that term; the intention to prohibit linguistic uses is also and is far from guaranteeing freedom“. The Board added that “respecting human rights is also respect the Gender Identity Law and the linguistic rights of people in all their dimension: any prohibitive regulation in this sense violates inalienable rights that have a long history of struggles and conquests as antecedent”.
“It is our duty to warn as researchers that there is no evidence that establishes a relationship between school failure or poor performance on standardized tests and the use of gender-inclusive language”, they added in relation to the main argument put forward by the GCBA to justify the measure, following standardized evaluations showed that in 2021 “the percentage of the boys who were in the advanced level decreased 13.4 percent“. Against the idea that the inclusive hinders literacy and reading comprehension, the Board held that “it would be desirable to verify if, instead, disinvestment in educational policies of the Ministry of Education of CABA can explain these results“.
He too Research Institute for Gender Studies of that same faculty rejected the prohibition. “From the Ministry of Education they ignore that language is dynamic and constantly changing thanks to those of us who use it; they ignore that language and ideology are inseparable, they ignore that reflecting on the use of one or another expression is a reflection on language and the worldThey deny that the ‘e’, the ‘x’ or the ‘@’ have been topics of discussion for years from the militancy and activism of innumerable groups,” they assured.
Outside the academic field, there were also repudiation by some of the publishers that in recent years began to use and thematize inclusive language. “More and more students identify with a different gender than assigned, or with none, or are in transition. Is this how the right to be and be named as they wish is sanctioned?they asked themselves from Chirimbote, the “editorial for free childhoods with a gender perspective“, whose catalog includes publications focused on figures such as Frida Kahlo, Violeta Parra or Juana Azurduy. Its authors write mostly in inclusive and a few months ago launched the campaign “Inclusive language in the Classroom”. “The pedagogical proposal of the Buenos Aires Minister of Education, Soledad Acuña, is censor identities, especially those of childhood and adolescence“, they added.
The translation publisher Ethos, meanwhile, which a few years ago published a inclusive language version of “The Little Prince”warned on his social networks that the measure of the educational portfolio seeks “censor and exclude“. “Yesterday’s announcement reveals a great lack of scruples and irresponsibility, because it encourages disinformation and feeds the hatred of sectors of society towards groups that seek to expand rights and leave a better world for our children”, they added. From the editorial they ironically recalled that the Buenos Aires Legislature itself approved the declaration of “Interest for Social Communication” of that book, “which seeks to guarantee access to linguistic and cultural rights. Although the initiative was promoted by the Frente de Todos bloc, the publisher stressed that it received “unanimous support, including the ruling bloc“.
