What a "discursive system of gender discrimination" is and how inclusive language can defeat it

Résumé En

My work on the linguistic and verbal expression of gender, in particular in writing and in terms of speech acts and linguistic performativity led me to highlight and define what I have called a “discursive system of gender discrimination”. This system is based on the way language is organized on a daily basis in unconscious historically built and structured discourses which, in a pragmatic way, exclude and discriminate each gender from the other – often in very implicit ways. The object of this communication is 1 / to show how it is possible to make these invisible speeches apparent and 2 / to show how this discriminating systematization is violent and represents a discursive phenomenon that we find at work not only in terms of gender, but also in all theother types of discrimination, all organized into a system also based on the very same semiotics and cognitive operations of categorization than those related to gender. The presentation will be based on French language and facts, so that examples will be taken from several corpora collected in France, in particular regarding the use of “Miss” and “Madam”, the feminization of profession name. This will lead me to explain why a form of social violence exists in the ways women are being named and talked about in diverse situations in society. I will thus illustrate the use of feminine gender inclusive language in France, how it is related to political ideologies, and what its real stakes are today after several centuries of repression and denial. The main theoretical framework is the theory of speech acts.