Between prescriptivism and polemic: L’écriture inclusive in the opinion pieces of Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Libération

Abstract

L’écriture inclusive sparked major language debates in the French Press. I use critical discourse analysis to examine how l’écriture inclusive is discussed, the contexts in which the term is evoked and its indexical field in a corpus of opinion pieces from Le Figaro, Le Monde, and Libération from 2017–2021. After establishing that l’écriture inclusive is a formula—heterogeneously employed and inherently polemical—my thematic analysis explores parallels between recent debates on l’écriture inclusive and earlier transnational non-sexist language debates and French-specific moral panics, demonstrating that l’écriture inclusive not only stands in for social insecurities but becomes the crucible through which older debates are extended and transformed. Close readings of selected excerpts establish the expansion of the (meta)semiotic field of l’écriture inclusive to index not only feminist language practices, but progressive ideologies generally, in which case l’écriture inclusive is linked with political correctness, islamogauchisme, gender ideology, and other salient boogeymen in contemporary French politics.