For decades, gender-fair language has regularly sparked heated societal debates, often polarized between ideological positions and anecdotal claims. In this context, psycholinguistics provides a scientific perspective on certain aspects of this contentious issue.

So far, research in the field has primarily focused on the effects of generic masculine forms (e.g., les chercheurs to refer to a group of both men and women). Numerous studies, repeated across multiple languages, have shown that even when grammar allows for a generic interpretation of the masculine, this rule tends to activate predominantly male mental representations in our brains. Conversely, it is often suggested that gender-fair forms might elicit less male-biased representations, for example through doubled forms (les chercheurs et chercheuses), gender-unmarked forms (les scientifiques), collective nouns (le personnel de recherche), or the use of the middle dot (les chercheur·euses).

Through empirical investigations, this work aims to clarify how these different linguistic forms influence the mental representations activated during reading. By systematically comparing these forms in behavioral experiments, we seek to quantify the efficiency of gender-fair writing, as well as to shed light on the mechanisms by which the brain constructs meaning during reading.

This research does not aim to prescribe linguistic norms but to provide evidence-based insights into a debate too often disconnected from empirical reality.

Administrative details:

Collaborators: Elsa Spinelli, Sharon Peperkamp