Italian: Schwa-washing in activism, the media and publishing

Speakers and the academic community are split in relation to the use of and attitudes towards gender-inclusive language, which substitutes feminine and masculine morphemes with novel strategies (schwa, asterisk, -u among the most used). Some see these strategies through the lens of political activism (Formato and Somma, 2023; Formato, 2024) while some others have grown to think that these are either erasing women (Robustelli 2021; Giusti 2022) or are artificial linguistic tools proper to an empty “politically correctness” (Arcangeli 2022). The history of these strategies, though, is demanding a much more nuanced understanding; specifically, these were initially used and advocated for by queer communities or individuals who were conceptualising the self outside the somewhat rigid frame of heteronormavity (and heterosexism) as well as the male/female binary. However, they slowly became mainstream-ed, aided by social media furore and a lively debate between those who were in favour and those who were firmly against, through guidelines and arguably prescriptive indications.

Mainstream and mainstream-ed are key in this chapter; on the one hand, gender mainstream is thought as a necessary and progressive set of strategies to reach gender parity (in an agenda-setting fashion), while on the other hand, mainstream-ed, for us, refers to the possible simplification of the debate with the scope of reaching a high number of people, through, arguably, a neoliberal lens. This chapter therefore attempts to explore the middle ground and asks: what happens when gendered activism, meant to dismantle the in-depth binary and heteronormative frame, meets a mainstream-isation of such instances? Studies on gender-inclusive languages have indeed demonstrated that exclusions and inclusions in relation to inclusive strategies are not clear-cut (Dame-Griff 2022).

The exploration, in relation to grassroot prescriptivism, in the media and in translation/publishing, aims to address this question, providing telling examples of this tension. With maintaining a positive overview of the linguistic urgency to deal with limiting options to narrate the self, this chapter wishes to provide a further conceptualisation of gender-inclusive language. It will be split in three main sections. In section two, the chapter will deal with changes in linguistic activism. In section three, we examine how Italian media and institutions are adopting inclusive language strategies, in a certain number of cases inconsistently. This phenomenon, which could be described as 'schwa-washing', where inclusive language appears to be used more for popularity or virtue signalling than for genuine inclusivity, potentially risks undermining genuine efforts towards linguistic inclusion. We demonstrate how these practices further polarize public opinion, with right-wing figures labelling such changes as Orwellian 'Newspeak' (e.g. Soncini 2021) or top-down language impositions, intensifying the already heated debate on gender-inclusive language. In section three, we show how the media debate is prone to manipulation and simplification; and finally, in section four, we explore what happens in publishing, specifically in translation, where gender inclusive strategies are used (Baldo, 2017, 2019, 2020) and commented on via official positionality and (un-)used practices. The three main sections, preceded by an introduction that highlights the available literature on the topic and followed by concluding remarks, demonstrate the intricacies of positive linguistic positionings in relation to describing oneself or a group of people.