UC Santa Barbara Ph.D. student Jordan J. Tudisco teaches inclusive vocabulary to their students, giving them a tool for expressing themselves and others as non-binary.

By Josephine Trilling

The vast number of words that need to be changed —adjectives, articles, pronouns, and objects—make inclusive wording more complicated in French than in English. Resistance from the French Academy and politicians also stifle the development and use of non-binary gender vocabulary, says a UC Santa Barbara researcher.

A speaker of multiple languages, Jordan J Tudisco is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at UCSB who teaches French and researches how linguistic systems shape gender and sexual identity. They analyze how cultural barriers such as those imposed by the French Academy, create difficulties for inclusive vocabulary in France. And there are also practical barriers, such as determining which sounds will be most natural to French ears.

Tudisco recently sat down for an interview about his work, an edited version of which appears here.

What are some of the unique challenges the French language poses to creating a gender-inclusive vocabulary?

In French, everything is gendered. Adjectives, articles, pronouns, nouns, and even some verb forms. Most of the time the masculine form is considered to be the root of the word, so when it comes to adding a non-binary alternative it is particularly hard. In other Romance languages, like Spanish and Italian, both the masculine and the feminine often have their specific endings, such as -o or -a, so you can create a third ending for non-binary forms. It is more complicated in French.

What has to be considered when designing an inclusive vocabulary that people will be willing to use?

You need something that can be picked up easily. For instance, the X is not a sound often used in French, so when it is proposed for gender-neutral forms, some people might say it makes inclusive writing sound foreign and less natural, so they might be less inclined to use it. But, there comes a point where you have to decide: Do you care? Some people will always be resistant to inclusive writing. If you keep repeating to yourself, ‘oh my god it’s so hard,’ that mindset is going to create a barrier, and it doesn’t matter how it sounds.

Could you talk a little bit about the French Academy’s role in spoken French and inclusive vocabulary?

In the 1634 century, the French monarchy created the Academy partly to unite the French empire by eliminating the different languages spoken throughout France and replacing them with ‘proper’ Parisian French. What they do today aims to protect this unity. It’s tricky to explain because they don’t have official authority, but in 2017, inclusive writing started to be used by the government, and as soon as the Academy wrote an open letter against it, they stopped using it. To this day, there are laws in France that say every advertisement must be in French or offer a translation, and that 40% of the music played on the radio needs to be in French.

Would integrating gender-inclusive vocabulary into the French language positively impact women?

Archives have shown that there used to be a lot of words to describe female professions like philosopher and doctor, but the Academy eliminated them. I realized this resistance by the Academy was about power when I noticed that the word president, président, only has a male form when referring to the president of a country, but has a female form when talking about the president of a club. This means, that even if a woman manages to become the French president, there is no female version of the word in French, so she would have to be described as ‘madame le président’ translating directly to ‘Ms. [male] President.’

Jordan J. Tudisco, a non-binary French teacher and Ph.D. student, designed a course that incorporates teaching inclusive vocabulary into the curriculum.

What relationship do you think vocabulary in France has to the perception of gender roles and sexual stereotyping?

In French, we are taught in school that the ‘masculine always prevails.’ There is a rule in French that if you have a group of people it only takes one man to change the descriptor to masculine, no matter how many women are present. Although this only applies to grammar, it has the potential to be internalized. It can cause people to think that the masculine always has power over the feminine.

Some warn that introducing inclusive writing into French would damage relations among francophone countries —mostly former colonies. What do you think?

This is a critique often made by the Academy, and it shows they care most about maintaining control over the French neocolonial empire than actually having a language that serves its diverse population. This critique can also create a false reality where inclusive forms are only something the global north cares about, which isn’t the case.

What do you see in the future for inclusive vocabulary?

I think that people are more open to change than most expect. My mom was able to pick it up in a matter of weeks. I think it often has more to do with how open-minded somebody is. That said, you can’t teach it in schools. It’s against the law. It was forbidden to be taught last year, 2021, and they are trying to pass a bill that bans it entirely. When this happens, inclusive writing becomes marked, meaning that although some people might want to use these forms, they may not want to get into a fight every time they speak.

Josephine Trilling is a second-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in political science and global studies. She wrote this for her Writing Program course Digital Journalism.