Gender-inclusive language as a Rational Speech Act in Spanish

Amidst social changes in gendered language use, there is pushback from institutions such as the Spanish Royal Academy, which claims that use of generic masculine (e.g., bomberos ‘firemen’) describing a mixed-gender group equally inclusive both men and women (Bosque 2012). By contrast, speakers have increasingly adopted gender-inclusive alternatives to o bomberas; Bengoechea 2015). Across two behavioral tasks, we investigated whether forms actually lead more interpretations. We found form (by contrast masculine) indeed yields interpretations, increasing inferred femaleness stereotypically male professions, but also decreasing female professions. In an attempt explain reasoning delivers developed computational cognitive model process. Our treats phenomenon instance markedness implicature: longer, guide listeners away their prior expectations. This work highlights need for further research into cross-linguistically, well against prescriptive perpetuating stereotypes.