Gender Fair Language: The Nascent Emergence for Gender Equity

GENDER FAIR LANGUAGE:

 The Nascent Emergence for Gender Equity

During the 1970’s the need for a kind of language which may be free from all kind of gender prejudices and may linguistically promote the competence of gender parity by avoiding all discriminatory linguistic practices. The same demand constituted the strong foundation for the advent of Gender Fair Language or Gender Inclusive Language or even Gender Neutral Language strongly advocating the avoidance of any sort of linguistic gender biases prevailing then in language practice existing in any form whether written or spoken. Many academic and non-academic organizations as part of their self-initiative issued guidelines from time to time on gender inclusivity and the usages of GFL. NCTE, India also came up with similar guidelines with the title Guidelines for Gender-Fair Use of Language, which was further revised in 2018 as Statement on Gender and Language discussing how gender differs from sex and sexuality. The first NCTE “Guidelines for Gender-Fair Use of Language” (2002) was propounded on the tradition-based binary concept of gender, and thus the same was largely limited and restricted by that binary in its discussion as for example, the use of exclusionary pronoun she/he pronouns were supposedly acceptable. The revised version of NCTE guidelines which was re-entitled as “Statement on Gender and Language” (2018), was modeled on the recent trends and understanding of gender which has been considered as the cultural construct that must not be restricted to binary categories. Hence, it suggests the novel innovative practice that transcends the gender binary to embrace every individual despite the fact that their identities are varied or sociologically lowered. This targeted sensitizing users to realize gender equity in education.

“The most common concepts of gender are based on the long-perpetuated notion that gender is a binary matter, and that it always aligns with a binary designation of sex (male/female). Yet contemporary understandings of gender clarify that gender identity and expression occur along a broad spectrum that is not limited to two binary alternatives, such as woman/man or girl/boy. ” [7] (NCTE-2018)

Key Terms- 1. Gender Fair Language, New Varieties of English, Gender Neutral Language & Feminizing Language 2. Thrust Area-- Gender Equity: New Varieties of English Language 3. Track-- Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences