Gender-inclusive language in Spanish: a data-informed sociolinguistic exploration of naming variation

Abstract

This paper presents a data-informed sociolinguistic exploration of the variation in the names given to gender-inclusive language in Spanish. We use publicly available Google Trends (GT) data to describe the frequency of usage of different names over time and explore their geographical distribution. To account for the challenges and limitations of using Google Trends, we compare the data with information from two large linguistic corpora (CORPES XXI and Google Books Ngram Viewer). Using these tools, we generate small datasets to explore the intricacies of the topic addressed in this paper. In our literature review, we identified 17 names for lenguaje inclusivo. We then selected the five that appeared more frequently to explore on Google Trends. Our results show that lenguaje inclusivo is the most common term, used in 47 countries. We find 33 countries that use lenguaje no sexista; 23, lenguaje de género; 17, lenguaje incluyente; and 17, lenguaje neutro. In this way, we find countries that use only lenguaje inclusivo and those that use all five terms we analyze for genderinclusive language. The visualizations and discussions in the paper contribute to elaborating on the complexity of gender-inclusive language by proposing questions for further research rather than drawing conclusions.