Progetti di ricerca

A hot debated topic in linguistics, psycholinguistics and social psychology nowadays is the need to make language gender-fair (to enhance visibility of women in society) and gender-inclusive (to include non-binary individuals). As for gender-inclusion, attempts have been made to introduce gender-neutral pronouns… Leggi tutto (like singular they in English, hen in Swedish) or gender-neutral forms (like ə/3 or * in Italian). Linguists typically consider these attempts unmotivated and ineffective, as grammatical gender does not entail a straightforward relation with the referents’ gender, thus arguing that changes in the language do not necessarily imply variations in meaning and consequent behavior. An alternative view comes from cognitive and social psychologists, who highlight the key role of language in maintaining and reinforcing stereotypes, thus arguing that language has an impact on social group hierarchies and disparities. What is still lacking in the current debate is a rational discussion based on scientific evidence about the feasibility and efficacy of gender-inclusive language to promote equality. Indeed, linguists on the one side and social psychologists on the other typically approach the problem from independent perspectives and are often blind to advances from the other side. Another issue which contributes to exacerbating the tones of the debate is the Anglocentric approach to the problem, which underestimates the impact of the proposed solutions in morphologically rich languages. INCITƏ aims to contribute to this debate by testing the impact of inclusive language on human cognition, and on the readability of texts. Bridging the fields of linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive and social psychology, INCITƏ approaches the current debate from a cross-disciplinary perspective, to offer scientific-informed responses and viable solutions. Stepping from rigorous linguistic assumptions, INCITƏ will design controlled experiments about the impact of gender bias and gender-inclusive language in language processing to address 3 main questions: 1. Does gender bias impact the grammatical agreement processing of subject-verb dependencies in sentences? 2. What is the impact of inclusive language in reducing gender bias, and in texts’ readability? 3. Which practical solutions can be implemented to boost gender inclusiveness? By means of the tools available in psycholinguistics (Eye-Tracking and EEG), INCITƏ will develop experiments with ecological validity to gather implicit measures of language processing. By means of the tools available in cognitive and social psychology, INCITƏ will also test the impact of individual-level variables in affecting participants’ behavior in linguistic tasks, as well as the effects of training. We will test Italian, a gender-marked language with a rich inflectional system, which constitutes a perfect arena to test the interplay of grammatical, conceptual gender and gender stereotypes during language processing.