How to Label ‘Gender-Fair’ Language Use in Dutch. A Discussion of the Main Terms Genderbewust ‘Gender-Aware’, Genderneutraal ‘Gender-Neutral’ and Genderinclusief ‘Gender-Inclusive’ in and outside Academia
摘要
In this chapter, I will address the main terms used in Dutch academic and non-academic discourse to refer to gender-fair language use. Before embarking on these naming practices, I will briefly describe the main strategies that can be used in Dutch (both Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch) to speak and write in ways that address and refer to persons in an inclusive way. As far as the naming practices themselves are concerned, a historical overview of these terms will be given as well as a corpus-based analysis of the main terms in present-day Dutch. The analysis will reveal a quantitative dominance of three notions: genderbewust ‘gender-aware’, genderneutraal ‘gender-neutral’ and genderinclusief ‘gender-inclusive’, with each of them showing up specific usage preferences, connected to their use in different domains (e.g. popular media, official language regulations, academic discourse).