Exclusionary Inclusion : A Critical Analysis of a Portuguese Governmental Policy Document on Gender-Inclusive Language

This thesis applies a Critical Discourse Analysis to examine an inclusive language manual published by Portugal's Economic and Social Council (CES) in 2021, analyzing how the policy document approaches gender inclusivity within the nation's broader equality strategy (ENIND 2018-2030). The study seeks to investigate whether the CES manual can truly challenge the traditional gender norms inherent to European Portuguese, and to what extent non-normative gender identities are recognized within its inclusive aims. The analysis reveals several systematic inconsistencies in the manual's handling of its stated goals. Namely related to its conceptual understanding of gender equality, framing gender as a biological essentialist fact. With its proposed solutions in how the language can become more inclusive being anchored in outdated sources and practices that fails to actually dismantle the very gender hierarchies it claims to challenge. Counteractively, the analysis demonstrates the manual's deployment of inclusive language as a mechanism for reinforcing traditional gender hierarchies, effectively rendering women and gender queer identities as either linguistically secondary or fundamentally invisible. The study concludes that the CES manual functions as a symbolic tool of inclusion, presenting linguistic recommendations that may appear progressive at a distance but upon closer scrutiny fundamentally reinforce normative gender structures. The findings seemingly fit into a bigger normative echo chamber that the Portuguese government is currently operating within. Where the country's inclusion efforts systematically exclude those who don't fit into the binary framework of a gender and cis-normative society.