What’s inclusive language?

Inclusive language is pretty much what it sounds like: language intended to include, welcome, and respect more people. Because marginalized people are systematically excluded, made invisible, attacked, stereotyped, and othered by lots of language habits, inclusive language specifically and particularly tries to include people and groups with less power and privilege.

Another useful way to think about this task is through Karen Yin’s term “conscious language.” (I’ll refer to her amazing resource Conscious Style Guide in many of the weeks to come.) Yin uses conscious language to mean “language that promotes equity, used skillfully in a specific context”—not language that somehow magically never offends anyone, but words used on purpose and in context “so that we can evoke and provoke skillfully.” It’s about using language on purpose and with enough information to make good decisions—decisions that serve our communication purpose well.

Why learn about and use inclusive or conscious language?

One reason is simply kindness and decency. We wish to avoid causing pain and harm. We want to invite people in, behave with empathy, and prioritize marginalized people’s safety. That’s inherently important!

Another motivation may be more practical in spirit: a lot of authors, marketers, service providers, and friend-seeking human beings don’t want to go around randomly alienating audience members.

The basic idea is to be intentional in our language use in order to support rather than harm, to build trust, and to let whatever we’re writing (or editing, or simply saying) do its work as effectively as possible.

a paradigm for thinking about inclusive language

This course is based on the following ideas:

In steering toward inclusive language, there are rarely clear-cut answers. It’s complicated! That’s because:

1.    Language is constantly changing. This is a good thing: it means that, as communities, we can advocate for and create meaningful linguistic changes. It’s also just neat. But it does mean that we can’t learn The Right Words and then never think about it again, and that there are going to be periods of genuine disagreement about what’s most respectful or appropriate.

2.    There’s huge diversity within every group. That includes different preferences and values around terminology.

3.    In-group and out-group language exists and matters. Some language is great when a person is using it to self-describe or when people are communicating within a marginalized group—imagine two trans women friends chatting with each other—whereas that same language might signal huge disrespect, lack of understanding, or even threat if used by one person to label another or in a more mixed-company type setting.

It's hard to know what we don’t know. We are all in a lifelong process of realizing we didn’t understand or notice something important, didn’t realize we had the wrong context or inadequate information, weren’t asking the right questions—not just in terms of inclusive language, but in terms of basically everything! We have to be curious and open to new information if we want to communicate effectively and be kind.

Because of those first two points, and because culture, society, technology, and people’s lived experiences are changing right along with language, this is a forever process. Getting good at inclusive language is not a one and done thing.

Language is important. Working toward more inclusive, thoughtful, and precise language matters. We have an ethical obligation to try, and to keep at it with open hearts and curious minds. But it’s not just an obligation: it’s also an ongoing opportunity to learn neat things about human experience and to understand ourselves and others better!

scope and limits

This is a course about inclusive language. More specifically, it focuses on English-language communications and is anchored in a US context.

However, it’s super important to acknowledge that language is not the only or main problem when it comes to, say, racism or transphobia! The distribution of literal resources, job and housing discrimination, barriers to healthcare access, and a long list of other equity, safety, and quality of life issues are both obviously important and not fixable through shifts in vocabulary. These matters are intertwined with, but not simply made up of, how we use language and tell stories.

Course materials and linked resources inevitably touch on broader issues of power, privilege, oppression, marginalization, and practical harm. However, they don’t even try to cover the whole scope of any week’s topic area. Instead, each week focuses on bringing up (at least some of) what we need to know to start rethinking language use in positive ways.