Is Gender‐Inclusive Language Left‐Wing? The Social Meaning of Four Gender‐Inclusive Strategies in French and German

ABSTRACT Despite evidence that gender‐inclusive language represents genders more equally than generic masculines, it still faces resistance, possibly due to its perceived association with left‐wing politics. This study explores the social meaning of gender‐inclusive language compared with generic masculines in French and German, using four gender‐marking strategies—two recently innovated and two more established—embedded in controlled textual contexts. The results confirm that gender‐inclusive language tends to be associated with a left‐leaning orientation, with notable variation across different inclusive strategies. Consistent with evidence from corpus studies, mid‐dot forms in French were judged as conveying a more progressive orientation than parenthetical forms. However, no difference was found between the asterisk and the middle capital I in German. The study also shows that gender‐inclusive language conveys a social meaning beyond political orientation: It indexes a persona that is generally younger and more likely to belong to gender minorities (nonbinary/diverse).