Third Gender Marking in Spanish: Evaluation of Current Options from a Linguistic Change Point of View

49 | 2024

Irene Checa-García

University of Wyoming, Laramie, USA
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9022-6817

Several proposals have been presented to make Spanish more inclusive in recent decades. In the case of inclusive language for a third gender, different groups advocate for new suffixes, such as <-@, -*, -x, -e, and -i>. In this work, I suggest that an option aligned with general trends in linguistic change is more likely to succeed, although intentional language planning will likely still be needed. Characteristics of a more easily adoptable third-gender suffix are presented, and each potential suffix is evaluated to determine which could be more successful from the perspective of linguistic change.

Keywords

inclusive language, third gender, language change, Spanish gender

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22355/exaequo.2024.49.09
[ Descarregar pdf ] [ Ver pdf ]

Direitos de autor: Creative Commons – CC BY NC

Acesso livre para quem lê e para quem escreve.

SCImago Journal & Country Rank