Inclusive language, a way to become aware, according to academics

The discussion about inclusive language in Spanish is a “spearhead” that entered not with the sole objective of modifying grammar but for society to become aware of the overlapping modes of discrimination that may exist in language.

This is how Guillermo Soto and Rafael Felipe Oteriño, director of the Academy of the Language of Chile and secretary of the Argentine Academy of Letters, respectively, highlight this Friday after the commemorative act of the 70th anniversary of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language (Asale) which was held this Friday in Madrid under the presidency of the kings of Spain.

“People become aware. The discussion of inclusive language is a kind of spearhead that enters society not necessarily with the sole objective of modifying grammar, but rather so that we become aware of the overlapping modes of discrimination that exist, ”says Oteriño.

And the value “it consists above all in making us discuss and have conscience “, points out the secretary of the Argentine Academy of Letters, who considers that the changes that feminism has been incorporating are the most important of this century in culture, something to which language is not alien.

The inclusive language is for the Argentine a subject to which we must be attentive because “the changes come from the bottom to the top, from the street to the dictionary is how it will be solved,” he says.

According to the director of the Chilean academy, the discussion on inclusive language “has raised awareness” of how people discriminate “with the use of language.”

Because this inclusive language “Remember with the difficulty it imposes when speaking, that many times you discriminate with the language”, emphasizes the director of the Chilean academy who points out that something else “is that the linguistic system is going to be modified, because for that to happen what has to be a change in its generalized use”, underlines Soto.

Another challenge that the language faces, both academics agree in affirming, is teaching Spanish to machines.

For Soto, the new relationship that Spanish speakers have with their language on the internet is also proposed: “The various variants of Spanish coexist, the speakers communicate from different areas of Spain, Peru, Argentina … and that diversity is da on the internet “.

This diversity implies “a new way of living the language”, highlights the head of the Chilean academy, who highlights that with the internet “awareness of the diversity of the language increases, since communication between Spanish speakers from different latitudes increases. and that more than tending to fragmentation tends to unity “.

“Isn’t this the door that opens for Spanish to be the language of science?” Asks the secretary of the Argentine academy, who remarks that the permeability of the Spanish language can be “a way of opening that door ”To science, who currently speaks English. (I)