The social debate on non-sexist language in Spanish

Abstract

Inclusive (non-sexist) language, an expression of the political and social transformations that have occurred in recent times, begins to take shape in Spain in the late 1970s, parallel to our Constitution and the first linguistic research into Spanish with gender perspective. It came up as the result of the demands from a part of society that feels misrepresented in language. This paper takes a tour of the most relevant international and national regulations, legislation and actions on European Spanish. Subsequently, it focuses on the most controversial aspects: non-sexist guides, which begin to be published in the 1980s, and, above all, some of the alternatives to the generic masculine that they propose, fundamentally the unfolded forms. All this has sparked a debate of great repercussion not only in the philological field, but also in the legal domain, in the media and in social networks.