A push to bend the French language to avoid offence to women and non-binary people could be outlawed from public and business use under a bill before the senate.
In the latest front in France’s culture wars, the conservative-dominated upper house is expected to approve a proposed law to halt the spread of gender-inclusive terms that began in the academic world and left-wing politics and are now entering corporate use. Approval by the more powerful lower house, the national assembly, is less certain.
President Macron, however, waded into the language fight on Monday, attacking the so-called “inclusive” language. France must “not give in to fashionable trends”, he said as he inaugurated a grand new centre for celebrating the French language.
The new coinages, which are mostly unpronounceable, include iel to replace the pronouns il and elle and the addition of suffixes to add feminine and plural senses to masculine gender nouns and adjectives that refer to people. Under this system, sénateurs becomes sénateur.rice.s and cher lecteur (dear reader) becomes cher·e·s lecteur·rice·s.
Lovers of the language, including its official guardian, the Académie Française, and Brigitte Macron, the president’s wife, have been railing against what they see as a barbaric abuse of syntax. The academy, founded in 1635, called the gender-inclusive terms a “mortal peril” originating in American “woke” culture which renders French incomprehensible.
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Brigitte Macron, a former French teacher, said she had nothing against adults changing sex but opposed mixing gender in grammar. There are two pronouns, il and elle, she said. “The language is beautiful. And two pronouns are fine.”
In his speech at Villers-Cotterêts, northeast of Paris, Emmanuel Macron said he rejected the argument that French needs to be mangled to convey neutrality. “In this language, the neutral form is provided by the masculine. We don’t need to add dots in the middle of words to make it better understood,” he said.
The trend to “inclusive” French has rolled on despite a circular from the government in 2017 asking the cabinet to stamp it out in their ministries and a 2021 message from the education ministry discouraging its use by teachers.
The Robert dictionary listed the iel coinage two years ago. The left-wing Paris council uses the non-binary suffix coinage in its communications.
Less-controversial inclusive language has been widely adopted, including the now current droits humains (human rights) instead of droits de l’homme (the rights of man). Parts of the business world are also embracing the controversial suffixes in the cause of non-discrimination.
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The senate bill calls inclusive French a left-wing construct that is being forced into the language for “militant political” reasons. The unpronounceable suffixes and the new pronouns “are the opposite of inclusion”, Cédric Vial, the senator presenting the bill, said. “The people most impacted by its use are the disabled, those with reading difficulties or dyslexia,” he added.
Left-wing senators attacked the bill. “It’s unconstitutional, backward-looking and reactionary and it comes from a conservative outlook that has long fought against the emergence of women,” Yan Chantrel, a socialist senator, said.
The senate bill seeks to ban the use of inclusive terms in all state sector communications and in all legally mandated communications in business and public life. This includes such things as job advertisements, contracts and company regulations.
If passed by the senate on Monday, the bill would go to the national assembly, in which Macron’s Renaissance bloc is the biggest party, where it is likely to be modified before any vote occurs.
