Work Packages

WP1 - Comparative description around gender and language in European and American Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.

  1. To conduct a thorough theoretical characterization of grammatical gender in Italian and in the European and American varieties of Spanish and Portuguese, focusing on noun classification, agreement patterns, and exceptions.
  2.  To analyze the extent of grammatical gender variation within and across European and American varieties of Spanish and Portuguese.
  3.  To contrast the gender category in the considered languages under comparative and typological methodology of crosslinguistic analysis.
  4.  To develop an open-access database for consultation of the functioning of grammatical gender in each language and in each variety studied.
  5.  To obtain a solid grammatical foundation that contributes to support the design of the tasks in the remaining WPs, as well as the interpretation of their results.

WP -2 Systematic survey of emergence and productivity of gender-inclusive language forms in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian 

  1. Map the use and productivity of non-binary or gender-inclusive forms to refer to groups and individuals in different linguistic communities in Latin America and Europe: Spanish (USAL, UBA), Portuguese (UFS) and Italian (UNIBO).
  2.  Reveal the personal uses and perception of use in other people of different gender inclusive strategies (duplication, neutralization, non-binary innovations) in different areas of the public and private sphere.
  3.  Verify correlations between perceptions, attitudes of acceptability and attitudes of adoptability of the different gender inclusive forms in the different communities.
  4.  Systematize potential differences in uses and perceptions around the production modality (written vs. oral), the age of the speakers (under 40 years old vs. over 40 years old), self-perceived gender (cis woman, cis man, non-binary, etc.), and the level of formal schooling (complete high school, undergraduate, postgraduate).
  5.  Relate the results of the survey to the linguistic policies practiced in each community regarding gender marking.

WP3 - Cognitive perspective: psycholinguistic experiments for testing processing of binary and non-binary gender markings in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian

  1.  To evaluate the processes of sentence comprehension and reference assignment to noun phrases with different variants of gender morphology in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.
  2.  To study potential differences in the comprehension and generation of reference depending on morphological variant, stereotypicality of nouns and role names, age and language of the participants.
  3.  To analyze the underlying neurophysiological processes during the comprehension of sentences containing noun phrases referring to people with different morphological gender forms.

WP4 - Sociolinguistic and discursive perspective: attitudes, perceptions, and uses of gendered language in secondary schools

  1.  To collect information about sex-gender representations and uses of gender-inclusive language that circulate at secondary schools, among different social groups.
  2.  To account for the representations that circulate about gender-inclusive language in particular, and about language in general, among high school students.
  3.  To investigate the discursive strategies used by students to express their positions on gender-inclusive language and identify the arguments that underlie said positions.
  4.  To correlate the social variables of the participants and their responses, to establish indicators of potential linguistic changes in process.

WP5 - Interdisciplinary projections: connections between academic research and education field

  1.  Project the systematized data in WPs 1, 2, 3, 4 for the development of transfer and dissemination actions in the educational field at secondary and university levels, as well as in the field of foreign language teaching.
  2.  Develop transfer, dissemination and teacher training actions with secondary school teachers and principals.
  3.  Develop transfer, dissemination and training actions with professors and management teams of consortium universities.
  4.  Develop transfer, dissemination and training actions with teachers and future teachers of foreign languages.
  5.  Design and produce textual and audiovisual material for use in educational institutions.

WP6 - Interdisciplinary projections: connections between academic research and public communication

  1.  Identify communicative practices, debates, and discourses about gender-inclusive language produced by social actors (feminist and LGBT organizations), journalists, influencers, and progressive and right-wing users in social media.
  2.  Develop exchange and interaction spaces on research results with associations of journalists, public media, labor unions, and organizations that work on gender equality, linguistic, and human rights.
  3.  Promote good practices regarding non-discriminatory uses of language in the media, and public communication of both national and multilateral, governmental and non-governmental organizations.