Attitudes towards varied inclusive language use in Spanish on Twitter

Abstract

Research into gender-inclusive language in Spanish has demonstrated that inclusive language generally appears in four forms: doublets, -@, -x, and -e. There is little research on language attitudes towards the use of gender-inclusive language in Spanish, although studies exist for other languages. The present study compiled a corpus of published tweets that contained the markers -@, -x, and -e. Based on this data, hypothetical tweets were constructed that fell into four different categories, corresponding to the author of the tweet: business, personal, academic, and political. These hypothetical tweets were built into an attitudes survey that was distributed on Twitter. Findings indicate that language attitudes for each type of inclusive marker and category of tweet are generally positive. Statistical analysis indicates a significant relationship between gender identity and attitudes towards the use of inclusive language in the political category.