Comprehensibility and appreciation of two gender-neutral neopronouns in French: iel and al

Gender-neutral pronouns are often criticized for diminishing text quality, yet little empirical research has addressed this issue in grammatical gender languages such as French. This study presents the first investigation into the comprehensibility and appreciation of two French gender-neutral neopronouns, iel and al. Using a between-subjects experimental design, 400 participants read a text containing one of four referential strategies: binary pronouns, iel, al, or name repetition. They then responded to measures assessing word difficulty, sentence difficulty, subjective comprehensibility, text appreciation, content question accuracy, and other control variables. Results indicated that texts with iel and al were partially perceived as less comprehensible than those using name repetition and texts with iel were less appreciated than texts with binary pronouns. However, only al negatively impacted content question accuracy. These findings, in line with studies from other languages, suggest that the linguistic system may influence the evaluation of gender-neutral pronouns, while providing little evidence that they impair performance on content questions.