As Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky wrote, language transforms and influences thought. Words are a tool through which we attribute meaning and meaning to reality. Consequently, no language is ever neutral because the words we choose become the lens through which we interpret the world.
Those who express themselves have a great responsibility in using inclusive and non-exclusive language.
Non-excluding language, also called “extended” or “broad”, puts the person at the centre, recognising and valuing every difference.
Inclusive language is the result not of a dogma, but of a path of awareness that leads everyone to recognise and “dismantle” their own cognitive biases which lead to the re-proposal, even unintentionally, of stereotypes, sexist, racist and ableist expressions.
For not discriminating, language choices must be clear, understandable, unequivocal and accessible to all. Inclusivity, clarity and accessibility are essential elements and closely linked to each other, as stated by the partners of the European SIMPL4ALL project.
But what happens when discrimination is not based only on one aspect but on a set of multiple categories that underlie social inequalities? Let’s think, for example, when conditions related to gender and race/ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, disability, social class, or religion are simultaneously present and interact together generating multiple “discriminations”.
We then talk about intersectionality, a term that was developed within the African-American feminist movements (court case of Emma DeGraffenreid against General Motors 1976).
In a famous article from 1989, the activist and jurist Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw used the term intersectionality to describe the intertwining of oppressions that derives from the overlap or intersection of different social identities in the same person, identifying an analogy in the intertwining of different identities with traffic at a street intersection, coming and going in all four directions (crossroad metaphor).
Since then, the concept of intersectionality has significantly influenced the approach to inequalities and the development of equality policies (“equality+”), also thanks to the work of the United Nations and the EU.