If politicians have to be recognized for something, it is their creativity with language. In the 2012 crisis, they said that there were no cuts but adjustments and that a tax increase was a temporary surcharge of solidarity. Now all you have to do is see some tricks of the political class to avoid sexist language: talking about users instead of users, or about those who study instead of students. These are not random examples, but are included in the guide that the Congressional Board approved in December to eliminate sexism from parliamentary language. There are fifteen pages with alternative proposals to words and expressions in common use that have led to a harsh response from the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), which comes out in defense of the language and gives a serious reprimand to the authors of the guide.
In its response, the RAE warns that "no progress is made in achieving democratic equality between men and women by artificially forcing the grammar and lexicon of the Spanish language, but rather by arbitrating legislative measures that lead to the equalization of rights."
Furthermore, he points out that the guide “poses a dilemma” by preparing recommendations only for Congress and implies “that speakers who do not apply the resources set forth there express themselves in sexist language.” In this way, “the everyday language of the majority of the millions of Spanish speakers would be sexist,” including parliamentarians when they do not speak from the tribune of Congress. A dilemma, which “hides the implicit desire to increase the distance” between “the official universe and the real world.”
The Congress text recommends avoiding “excessive use” of the “generic masculine” and refraining from using expressions that contain the indefinite masculine (instead of “about two thousand attendees”, say “approximately two thousand…”), asking for adjectives nouns (“users” instead of “users”), splitting nouns (senators) and prioritizing terms that do not present gender variation (instead of “different speakers will speak” say “different speakers will speak…”), among Another questions.
“The editors of the text do not seem to care that the substitute expression is extremely forced for any Spanish speaker,” censures the Academy, which emphasizes that “the use of this substitute resource” can “considerably” modify the meaning of what is intended to be expressed.
However, for the RAE, "the most conflictive point" of the manual is the interpretation of the so-called "inclusive masculine", on which "fundamental discrepancies" persist. He points out that “the masculine gender is inclusive (in Spanish and many other languages) in a large number of contexts” and that “the fact that it is not inclusive in some cases should not lead to the absurd conclusion that it never is.” ”. At the same time, it highlights the “paradox” that the same document implies “replacing it,” but at the same time asking “to avoid excessive use.”
The Academy emphasizes that societies in which languages are spoken that organize the morphological properties of the genus in a different way, as well as the signs of agreement “are not necessarily more democratic than ours.”
But it's not all scolding. The RAE applauds that Congress recommends to deputies – and deputies – that they avoid the arroba as a wild card for the vowels o and a (l@s parlamentari@s), or letters like e (les parlamentaries) in similar contexts. “It represents considerable progress,” she celebrates.
