Reading times of sentences with inclusive language in Spanish: a psycholinguistic study

Inclusive morphemes in Spanish, -e y -x, have begun to be used in place of generic masculine forms. In this study, we look at the processing of sentences with inclusive language from the perspective of experimental cognitive psychology and with the methodological tools of psycholinguistics.

A sentence-by-sentence self-paced reading experiment examined the difference in reading times between sentences containing the traditional, masculine, generic form and sentences with gender inclusive language. The experiment was carried out in 69 monolingual speakers of River Plate Spanish: 38 young adults (between 18 and 30 years: 23 women and 15 men) and 31 older adults (between 31 and 60 years: 12 women and 19 men). Results: sentences with inclusive language were read more slowly than sentences with the generic masculine form. Surprisingly, neither age nor gender were found to have significant effects.

These results suggest that reading sentences with inclusive morphemes results in a higher processing cost and that this language change is in its very early stages.