[by Yana Grinshpun]
- Dementiae symmetriarum ratiocinationes.
The new circular from the minister concerned about the future of our children, and now our girls, recommends
"It is also requested to use formulations such as "the candidate or the candidate" so as not to indicate a gender preference, or to use formulas such as "the inspectors and the inspectoresses of national education" to recall the place of women in all functions" (right here).
Before the entry into the fray of the inclusive ideology, whose aim is to destroy the foundations of the common language, no linguist, nor any speaker of the language would have thought that the use of the neutral masculine form would have any connection with "the place of women in all functions". No teacher imagined that the teachers' room was forbidden to her and her place stolen by male predators. No female student stopped dead in her tracks, her stomach tight, in front of a canteen to students. I did not back down in 2006 from a position as Lecturer in Language Sciences, stopped by the masculine morphological form of "master", which according to the circular, would not give me access to it. My friends were recruited for the position of head of Service by the major Parisian hospitals. They may be named heads Today, this phenomenon is subsequent to their recruitment. My doctor is a very competent lady, the absence of the "medicine" duplicate does not prevent her from practicing her profession for 30 years.
The word "gender" in grammar does not correspond to the meaning given to it by certain feminist currents through contamination with gender. "Gender" in linguistics refers to the way in which the lexicon of languages is organized.
It is therefore a fault of reasoning, or downright an ideological lie, to say that the feminine title would open up paths previously closed to the poor victims of the cis-heteropatriarchal world. But the problem is not only in the titles and their feminization which has already taken place and which have served as a Trojan horse; it is above all in the recommendation of duplicates, in the recommendation of binarity which is a symptom of dementiae symmetriarum ratiocinationes.
This recommendation from the minister, anxious to save the language, does exactly the opposite of what he is trying to do: it destroys it. The obsession with binarity goes against the normal functioning of French and most languages in the world, where the morphological form of the masculine, also called "unmarked" functions as a generic form.
- Inclusive writing - confusing formula
The confusion begins with the definition, or more precisely the non-definition of what “inclusive writing” is.
The expression "inclusive writing" does not only refer to a type of writing, but to a set of phenomena of different orders. "Inclusive writing" is, therefore, a semantic muddle, because it encompasses the lexicon (the feminization of job titles), spelling (the recommendation to use feminine markers whenever a masculine form is used in writing), the morpho-syntactic phenomenon of adjectival agreements concerning words of different genders within the same noun phrase.
If the authors of the circular think they have banned inclusive writing, they have only ratified what they claim to be fighting against. Because inclusive writing is not just the middle ground.
- The masculine “becomes invisible” in the neutral
Let us imagine for a moment all that will have to be rewritten in light of this ministerial text. If we take it literally, the statement Man is mortal is sexist, because it assumes that women are not. I cannot say against whom this sexism is directed: against women who are denied the right to die, or against males who are declared their sad destiny. Whatever the case, one senses that the Bible and works of anthropology will be doomed to be thrown under the Caudine Forks of the inclusivists.
I'll let Eugenio Coseriu speak so that no one thinks that these are my "personal opinions on the language."
"Their [signs'] relationship often corresponds to the formula: non-A/A, in which the term A is characterized as such, while the term non-A is characterized only negatively in relation to the term A, as "that which is not determined as A", so that it can be the opposite of the term A, properly speaking, but it can also encompass this term […] This implies that the term "negative" (also called "neutral", "unmarked", or "extensive") functions concretely as two signifieds of language: a signified which is the opposite of the term "positive" (also called "marked", or "intensive") and another which corresponds to the basic value of the respective opposition and which encompasses the zone of signified corresponding to the positive term, the opposition itself between the two terms being in this case suspended […]. Womens is, in opposition woman/man, the positively marked term, applying, except metaphorically, only to adult female human beings, whilemen y is the neutral or extensive term, which can apply to both male human beings (men and women), and to human beings in general. In grammar, the singular and often, in our languages, a neutral term compared to the plural, which can also apply to the plurality (The French are loyal, the Spanish are generous.), and, in the same way, the masculine is extensive in relation to the feminine: student applies exclusively to female persons, while A student, and even more so its plural students, apply to both male students and students in general.”
The feminine and the masculine are here in a relationship of inclusiveness. If we follow a logic of social egalitarianism, we can notice that the feminine is a marked gender and that it can only be'exclusivelyt feminine, without the possibility of including another reference. However, the masculine, when it merges with the neuter, loses its restrictive semantic traits and "becomes invisible", as they say, in undifferentiated uses. Thus, in We are looking for someone for a position of guardian, neither someone ni guardian do not refer to a particular gender. Replace guardian due to a manager, garbage collector or doctor the effect, and the operation, will be the same.
If I say: "The authors of Blanquer's circular concerning inclusive writing have not consulted linguists. They have therefore written a fallacious text", it is not a question of "privileging the masculine", but of marking by the function those who wrote this circular without speaking of their sex. Authors et they are generic. And shame on the male who thinks about it.
So this circular is about the confusion between biological sex and grammatical gender. To put it more clearly, the circular takes women for words. or vice versa. And yet, a large number of articles, which we are sorry to rewrite many times, tirelessly recall the basics of how common French works.
However, the problems, inconsistencies and misinterpretations do not stop there.
The need to "mark the place of women in languages" by doubling the titles comes up against a terrible problem of epicenes (nouns and adjectives).
- The scandal of epicenes
If I say: "The judges are unanimous", I am in great embarrassment. The (sexual) scandal consists in "making invisible" the sex of the judges and the adjective (epicene) does not serve to reveal it either.
And it goes far:
" The linguists, philosophers, lawyers and journalists are at the meeting for the conference on sexual and racial discrimination." No adjective to indicate the sexual organs of the referents.
Let us go even further, what will the poor schoolmistresses have to do, by saying to the children:
" The children, we will make you the stars of French science”. (Wishful thinking!)
What to do with the word "children" and the determinant "the" which do not allow us to know whether we are talking about boy children or girl children? I am not talking about the insult made to children of both sexes with the word "star" which is feminine and cannot be masculinized!
And if we imagine ministers, lawyers, judges and political scientists in the same assembly, would one write in a newspaper:
" The female and male ministers, female and male judges, female and male lawyers, female and male political scientists have met and met?
As a conclusion
We can see that the circular does not take into account the functioning of the language, it contravenes the morphological and grammatical system of French by deconstructing the common language. All the circulars concerning spelling aimed at its simplification, taking into account the difficulties of users, but this circular is based on false, incoherent and fantastical linguistic premises which are likely to deconstruct the teaching of the common language.
