Flowers and pearls: Dear members
Sarah Pally, linguist and partner at the agency Partner & Partner, takes a close look at (advertising) language in her column "Blossoms and pearls". This time it's all about gendering.
Gendering is rarely a real challenge from a linguistic point of view - but you almost always get it wrong. You can never please everyone.
Too much, too little, too demonstrative, too nonchalant... you get everything thrown at you on the same day. Even in cases that are actually perfectly clear in terms of language and have nothing to do with the topic at all.
That a Bank a employer has nothing to do with subliminal ideology, but with grammar. Nor is there any ideology behind it if members are not gendered. Genus and gendering are not the same thing - there is no leeway with the former and too much with the latter.
Swampy grease trap
The Duden offers possibilities for gendering, but no standard. That is why we are all now gender pioneers and the Duden will hold back until something has finally prevailed on the battlefield of ideologies, so that it can then be crowned the norm.
This pioneering is exhausting and sometimes even requires imagination and adaptability (blörg), has to be constantly adjusted (argh) and discussed (oh no) and requires a strong will (long since broken). A huge, swampy, barely avoidable pit of fat. Understandably, this is too much for most people and at some point simply gets on their nerves.
So anyone who genders and makes an effort to do so is definitely doing pioneering work. And anyone who doesn't genderize definitely hasn't understood anything. Gendering should be non-ideological, of course - normal. But normality requires a standard. So, go for it, Duden.
