Gender-Sensitive Language - or the Language Reinterpreted

Abstract

This article aims at stimulating linguistic reflection on gender-sensitive language in the Portuguese context, in different epistemologies. First, it examines whether there are linguistic reasons for generic masculine and noun agreement in the masculine, discussing reference grammatical explanations in Portugal. A qualitative description of alternative solutions in contemporary European Portuguese follows this. Finally, in line with socio-interactionist linguistics, indebted to Saussure and Coseriu, language is seen in the dialectical movement from the social to the individual and from the individual to the social - and in the tension between solidarity with the inherited technique, its reinterpretation and the initiative to recreate it.