The ongoing societal discussions on equal representation of genders in language led to the creation of several forms of inclusive language for French. This growing awareness of inclusive language also becomes increasingly more relevant in the context of French L2 education: while learners may want to learn forms of inclusive language in their L2, the pedagogy of such linguistic innovations presents challenges because their integration affects the grammar in various ways.

In order to successfully integrate inclusive language into the French L2 classroom, we need more substantial knowledge about all aspects related to inclusive language in the Francophone world. This is where your PhD project comes in. You will combine different methodologies to address the following points: (i) the use of inclusive language forms by speakers of French from Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland) and Francophone Africa, (ii) the influence of inclusive language on text processing (i.e., reading and comprehension), and (iii) the attitudes of L1 and L2 speakers of French about inclusive language.

We expect you to conduct fieldwork and corpus studies on inclusive language in Francophone Europe and Francophone Africa, and to design and carry out psycholinguistic experiments on text processing (in cooperation with specialists from the ACLC), as well as sociolinguistic surveys.