Excessiveness in a German Social Media Debate on Gender-fair Language

Authors

• Hanna Acke Åbo Akademi University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51814/nm.122738

Keywords:

gender-fair language, pejorative language, debate

Abstract

Gender-fair language is a contested topic in contemporary
Germany. Many reports on the introduction of language changes meant
to reduce discrimination result in heated debates in print, online and
social media.
In this article, I qualitatively analyse a selected debate on gender-fair
language on Twitter to find out how excessive the language use is and
who makes use of what kind of excessive language. The time frame of
analysis covers a critical discourse moment in 2018 during which the
Council for German Orthography for the first time dealt with new gen-
der-fair spelling variants. Since the Council, being the only official lan-
guage planning institution for German, publishes the official regulations
on orthography valid in schools and administrative bodies in Germany,
its decision was highly anticipated and disputed.
The analysed debate contained only a few argumentative exchanges
on the topic. In general, it can be said that Twitter was mostly used to take
a stance, not to engage in discussions. The overall style of the debate was
polemic and exhibited many and various instances of excessive language
use, mostly by opponents of gender-fair language. This group made use
of vulgar language, pejoratives and in some cases direct insults. They
especially questioned their adversaries’ mental health. Only a few pro-
ponents used excessive language when they insinuated a lack of mental
capacity in their adversaries.