The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) has prepared a note in which it criticizes the document of recommendations to promote the use of inclusive language approved last December in the Congress of Deputies, stating that “there is an implicit desire to increase the distance , already considerable today, between the official universe and the real world”.
In its note, the RAE explains that “it is more than evident” that each person has the right to use the linguistic formulas “that they freely choose.” However, he defends the idea that many grammatical and lexical uses of Spanish are not sexist, although the authorities present them as such.
“The equality of men and women in our country is not supported by asking citizens (whether they are parliamentarians or not) to make constant syntactic, morphological and lexical balances to avoid linguistic options that belong to their natural way of expressing themselves,” he stressed. , alluding to other pronunciations regarding inclusive language.
Likewise, the Academy believes that “artificially forcing” the grammar and lexicon of the Spanish language does not represent progress in the fight to achieve democratic equality between men and women. On the other hand, it considers it necessary to have legislative measures that lead to the equalization of rights, improving the education that young people receive in school and “working in many other ways for a society that effectively reflects all these values.”
“The document of the Congress Board implies, from its very title (Recommendations for a non-sexist use of language in the Parliamentary Administration) that speakers who do not apply the resources set out there express themselves in sexist language,” he lamented. the institution directed by Santiago Muñoz Machado.
“The daily language of the majority of the millions of Spanish speakers around the world would therefore be sexist, including that of the Spanish parliamentarians themselves when they do not speak from the rostrum or do not draft legislative projects,” he noted.
Furthermore, he warns that with these criteria it would also be equally sexist “the language of literature, essays, science, cinema, journalism, legislation and many other areas (not necessarily colloquial or informal) in which written texts in Spanish they are not usually written applying the resources that the Administration recommends”.
Taking into account the previous points, it is for this reason that the RAE “suspects” that, behind this “peculiar” dilemma, hides “the implicit desire to increase the distance, already considerable today, between the official universe and the world.” real”. Although it celebrates some recommendations approved by Congress, such as the lesser use of the ‘@’ or the letters ‘e’ or ‘x’, the Academy believes that social achievements are not advanced “by arbitrarily modifying morphological, syntactic and lexical options that the Spanish shares with many languages.
The recommendations to which the Academy refers in its statement are those measures approved last December in the Congress of Deputies on the use of inclusive language. Some proposals include replacing words such as “employees” with “staff”, or “citizens” with “citizenship”, as well as differentiating the use of masculine and feminine in the designation of professions and activities (deputy, deputy or members of Congress ).
The objective that the Congress Board wants to achieve, together with the support of PSOE, Sumar and the PP, is to “avoid excessive use of the generic masculine.” Likewise, it recommends not “using expressions or words that incur grammatical errors, lack of legibility or that are not included in the RAE Dictionary.” In this way, it is possible to avoid the massive use of ‘at’, ‘x’ or ‘e’ to refer to all existing genders without discrimination.
With these Recommendations for a non-sexist use of language in the Parliamentary Administration, Congress seeks to fulfill the mandate of the Equality Law of 2007, which urges public powers to “implement non-sexist language in the administrative field”, as well as the first Equality Plan approved by the Cortes Generales in 2020.
The regulatory reform approved at the beginning of the legislature to regulate the use of co-official languages ??in the Chamber, already included an additional provision so that, in the shortest possible time, “a review” of the text of the Congressional Regulations be undertaken to adapt it to gender-inclusive language.
As parliamentary sources informed the Europa Press agency, there is no date to begin this review of the Chamber’s rules, but the plan to carry it out in this legislature is maintained. Of course, for the moment, the approved guide will have to be applied in parliamentary documents.
