The Inclusive Language Field Guide: 6 Simple Principles for Avoiding Painful Mistakes and Communicating Respectfully

THE

INCLUSIVE

LANGUAGE

FIELD GUIDE

6 Simple Principles for

Avoiding Painful Mistakes and

Communicating Respectfully

SUZANNE WERTHEIM, PhD

The Inclusive Language Field Guide

Copyright © 2023 by Suzanne Wertheim

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First Edition

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wertheim, Suzanne, author.

Title: The inclusive language field guide : 6 simple principles for avoiding painful mistakes and communicating respectfully / Suzanne Wertheim, PhD.

Description: First Edition. | Oakland, CA : Berrett-Koehler Publishers, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023007913 (print) | LCCN 2023007914 (ebook) | ISBN 9781523004249 (paperback) | ISBN 9781523004256 (pdf) | ISBN 9781523004263 (epub) | ISBN 9781523004270 (audio)

Subjects: LCSH: Communication and culture. | Business communication. | Discourse analysis.

Classification: LCC HM1206 .W47 2023 (print) | LCC HM1206 (ebook) | DDC 302.2—dc23/eng/20230417

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023007913

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023007914

2023-1

Book production: Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Cover design: Ashley Ingram

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: Harness the Power of Language

1 Move Beyond the Dictionary

2 Reflect Reality

3 Show Respect

4 Draw People In

5 Incorporate Other Perspectives

6 Prevent Erasure

7 Recognize Pain Points

8 Look to the Future

Discussion Guide

Notes

Resources

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author

PREFACE

Back when I was a university professor, I taught students from all kinds of backgrounds. They were curious, intelligent, and hardworking. But after my students graduated, some of them would come back to me with disturbing stories about their experiences in the working world. These stories would often involve hurtful things said to them—things that made them feel disrespected, or excluded, or overlooked.

It hurt my heart to hear those stories. It made me want to rush over to those offices and organizations and explain to people how their language was causing harm and how they could do better.

For years, I’d been educating people about the power and nuances of language as part of my linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics classes. But why was this incredibly useful and practical information basically locked behind academic doors?

It seemed unfair to me that to learn concepts that could really help you with your everyday communication, you had to attend an elite institution and also know to take classes like mine—classes that many people thought were only relevant if they were going to major in either linguistics or anthropology. I knew how useful what I taught was to people in a wide range of professions because former students would email me years after taking even just a single intro course to tell me about a concept that they still found helpful.

They’d write things like Professor Wertheim, hierarchy marking helped me figure out why this guy on my team is so annoying—he’s acting like he’s above me when he’s not! Or I work in marketing now, and I used Bakhtinian ‘flavor’ to talk my boss out of an ad campaign that would have been seriously problematic. Thank you!

They even wrote to tell me that concepts I had taught had helped them with problems with their romantic partners, their families, and their friends. And while these emails made me genuinely happy, they also reinforced just how unfair it was that more people didn’t have access to this useful information.

I left the university system determined to address these two problems:

1. People saying unpleasant and harmful things because they don’t realize what is problematic about their language

2. People not having access to the information that can help them be as respectful and as welcoming in their communication as they want to be

And that is why I have written this book, which boils down twenty-five years of research and instruction into six simple principles—common-sense principles that anyone can use to improve their communication, both at work and in their personal lives. They are:

1. Reflect reality.

2. Show respect.

3. Draw people in.

4. Incorporate other perspectives.

5. Prevent erasure.

6. Recognize pain points.

I know from my former students how important it is to make everyone feel included—but I also know how challenging inclusive language can feel for people who have internalized older, and now outdated, norms.

This book is designed to make it easy for you to communicate in a way that’s inclusive. To sidestep problematic language, avoid painful mistakes, and treat people with the respect and consideration that builds and strengthens relationships.

A NOTE TO THE READER

This book isn’t organized by identity category, but instead by principles of human behavior. Many people come to guides on inclusive language looking for information on how to talk or write about a specific group of people. But this book is different; it starts with Principles of Inclusive Language and then uses examples involving different kinds of people to illustrate those principles. If you’re looking for information all in one place for one specific group, that’s not what you’re going to find.

Instead, this book goes deeper. I’m going beyond the how to use inclusive language and grounding everything in the why. By the end of the book, you’ll have all the information you need to move from problematic language to inclusive language for any group of people that you’re interested in. The journey just may look a little different than what you expected.

Introduction

Harness the Power of Language

MY FRIEND OSCAR was in the middle of an interview for a job as a professor when a comment from a potential colleague stopped him in his tracks.

(His name, like all the names in this book that don’t come from the public domain, has been changed.)

This was on Day 2 of his campus visit, which might sound casual, but is actually pretty intense. When you’re a finalist for a professor position, you go and visit the college for a few days. You give a talk, you have hours and hours of meetings, and you eat every meal with people who are evaluating you. You’re on your best behavior from morning until night. It’s exhausting.

So, Oscar is having lunch with a professor I’m going to call John, who might end up being one of his colleagues for the rest of his working life. (Seriously, these are high-stakes interviews. Many of the people evaluating you are trying to decide if they would like to work with you for the next twenty or thirty years.) And then John looks at Oscar’s wedding ring and says a thing that Oscar has been dreading.

"I bet your wife would love those bungalows on the south side of town."

Wife.

Problem is, Oscar is gay. And he’s married to a man.

So, there’s his husband, Fred. But no wife.

Imagine what it’s like to be in Oscar’s position. Maybe you don’t have to imagine, because something similar has already happened to you.

Now that John, his interviewer, has assumed he’s talking to a person who has a wife, Oscar has two basic choices for his next conversational turn. And neither of them are good ones.

Option 1: He can pause and correct John and explain that his spouse is, in fact, male.

But that might be dangerous. What if John is biased against people who aren’t straight? He’s already shown through his language that he isn’t considering options beyond heterosexuality.

As one of the interviewers, John is in the power position here, and he can shut down Oscar’s job prospects. And in the state where the college is located, it’s perfectly legal for him to refuse to hire Oscar because he’s gay. Usually, an interviewer will say something more coded like, "I think he’s not really a culture fit, rather than, I don’t want to hire him because he’s gay." But the bias is the same. And so is the outcome.

Option 2. Since outing himself may be dangerous and cost him this job, Oscar might decide to say nothing. To not correct John and let him keep on assuming that Oscar has a female spouse.

This is less dangerous in terms of job prospects, but now Oscar is erasing an important part of his life. And he may be wondering: Is this department a good fit? Can I show up as who I am and be welcomed? Or is this a place that isn’t thinking about people like me? Am I going to have to hide the most important person in my life while my straight colleagues get to talk about their partners?

This is some serious stuff to consider, especially in the middle of a job interview where you’re trying to make a good impression and also trying to figure out if you actually want the job.

And Oscar’s dilemma is all because of one word. One non-inclusive word.

Wife.

If John had simply said spouse instead of wife, there would have been no dilemma for Oscar. In fact, he would probably have noticed the inclusive word choice and thought something like Oh, John didn’t assume I’m straight! That’s cool. Looks like this is a department that keeps in mind that some of us are LGBTQ+.

Just one word can be the difference between Oscar feeling welcomed and seen or feeling erased and possibly unsafe.

A single word can change the course of an interview, a job, a relationship. When you know the Principles of Inclusive Language, you can choose words that are actually as polite, respectful, and welcoming as you want them to be.

TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY ETIQUETTE

There is a new twenty-first-century etiquette. We are seeing new words, new norms, and new expectations. And being polite means using inclusive language, now more than ever. In many ways, the new etiquette is like older versions, but with one major update: it is now expected that we will take into consideration people whose perspectives have historically been ignored, erased, or dismissed as less important.

I hear from a lot of people that they feel a bit at sea when it comes to this new etiquette. They tell me that it suddenly feels as if what used to be just fine is now enough to get them strongly criticized. That language, especially language that they’re using publicly, now feels like a minefield—and they’re caught in the middle without a map.

Executives tell me that they’re anxious about saying the wrong thing when they address the whole company in all-hands meetings or do interviews with journalists. They’re surprised and unhappy about the negative comments they get on Slack from their younger employees or at getting called out on Twitter.

One CEO confessed, I just don’t want to ‘get cancelled’ for saying the wrong thing. So now I’m afraid to say anything involving ‘difficult’ topics. But his employees noticed that he was avoiding these topics, and it lowered their trust in him and in the company.

PR people and marketers tell me they’re concerned that their press releases and ad campaigns will be accidentally offensive and bring the wrath of the internet down on their heads.

One digital marker worried, What if our campaigns are unintentionally racist or sexist in ways we’re just not seeing? Because, frankly, our team just isn’t that diverse. I’m afraid we’re going to turn off potential customers.

Heads of HR tell me they’re concerned that they’re losing potentially great hires because recruiters are offending them or signaling that the company culture won’t welcome them.

A VP of Talent Acquisition told me they were frustrated. So, a recruiter misgendered a top candidate in an interview the other day, saying things like ‘a woman like you’ and ‘she.’ That candidate just withdrew from consideration, saying they don’t want to work for a company that’s so insensitive. They said they only want to work somewhere they’ll feel comfortable so they can actually focus on their job.

Grandparents tell me they’re nervous talking to their grandkids, especially when it comes to gender and sexual orientation. They see that the landscape has shifted, but they don’t quite know how.

My granddaughter announced that she’s something called nonbinary? And she changed her name from Sophie, which is a perfectly lovely name, to some kind of ridiculous name she says is gender neutral. And they tell me I’m wrong for calling her ‘she’? But she’s my baby girl! With this attitude and these language choices, their relationship with their grandchild is likely to be awkward and low on trust, and it may become increasingly distant.

Some people in their forties and older tell me that they sometimes just don’t understand their younger colleagues and the rules they’re playing by. (Others have been engaging in these kinds of inclusive practices for a while, so they are already comfortable.) And some autistic people tell me that it can be frustrating to have communication rules that already feel unnatural to them shift without explicit notification or explanation as to why.

An engineer in his fifties objected: Why should I include my pronouns in my Slack profile and in my Zoom window? I’m not also announcing to everyone that I’m gay. His refusal to adopt the new etiquette, combined with his lack of awareness of the reasons for normalizing pronoun presentation, is negatively impacting his work relationships.

It’s no fun to feel the way Oscar did in that interview, but it’s also no fun to feel like you have to constantly second-guess everything you say—or to feel so worried that you avoid saying anything at all.

Luckily, all of this complicated business around modern etiquette isn’t actually all that complicated once you understand the Principles of Inclusive Language. And that’s exactly what I’m going to share in the pages to come: the tools that will allow you to communicate with confidence.

• • •

When you were a kid, adults probably gave you some basic dos and don’ts. For example, many English-speaking American parents say things like:

Do say please and thank you.

Don’t eat with your elbows on the table.

Do say sir or ma’am to be polite.

Don’t interrupt people.

But even these rules, which might seem obvious if they were handed down to you as a child, aren’t foolproof.

Because what’s appropriate depends on context.

For example, among friends, it can be a sign of closeness to just ask for or take something without a more formal sounding please or thank you attached to it. And some people may think elbows on the table are just fine. What’s more, addressing someone as sir when they aren’t male or ma’am when they aren’t female won’t express respectful politeness but instead is likely to cause irritation, anger, or pain. Finally, a person may come from a culture in which jumping in while someone is still speaking is a sign of engagement and shows that the conversation is going well.

You’ve spent your lifetime developing a sense of what’s appropriate. You might not realize it, but you are incredibly sensitive to context. When you’re assessing a situation and adjusting your behavior, you’re taking into account all kinds of factors. Things like

• how many people are involved and how close you are to them;

• where you are and if you’re communicating in person or via technology;

• the power dynamics;

• the type of interaction (like a meeting, a face-to-face conversation, a series of text messages, a social media post); or

• the identity characteristics of the people involved.

Note that some autistic people may be assessing different contextual factors than allistic people (allistic is a useful term that describes people who specifically are not autistic; neurodivergent is too broad to use in this way). For example, allistic people are likely to interpret the concept of social in terms of negotiating social status and identifying power gradients. But autistic people are likely to interpret social as working collaboratively in an interaction where the primary goal is to learn from one another.¹

Related to this is a communication feature commonly called monologuing. This is where an autistic speaker shares a large amount of highly detailed and often specialized information on a particular topic—a topic that might be considered a special interest. For the autistic person, this way of speaking is an informational way of socializing. It signals interest and engagement in the conversation and is understood as social due to the sharing and learning of information. But for an allistic listener, the monologuing may not seem like social interest and instead can be seen as rude, self-centered, and hogging of the conversational floor.

What’s considered appropriate or acceptable changes based the contextual factors I just listed and a whole bunch more. The calculus to figure out what is appropriate is subtle, complicated, and frequently shifting. In fact, I used to teach entire graduate courses on how to analyze the many ways that context affects what people say and how they say it.

So when people come to me looking for a straightforward list of inclusive language dos and don’ts, I tell them: I wish it was that simple.

Sometimes they ask, Can’t you just tell me the words I shouldn’t use and the words I should use in their place?

The answer is: sure, for some things. But often, what’s appropriate changes so much based on context that it’s just too complicated to make straightforward lists.

What’s more, language evolves and changes over time. Some words that were considered acceptable just a few years ago are seen as less desirable or even unacceptable today. And this is a cycle that keeps on going.

Fortunately, you don’t need to keep up on every trend or change to become proficient in twenty-first-century etiquette. And there is a better way to manage this information than only using long lists of words and phrases (though I have included a helpful list of suggested substitutions in the Resources section at the end of this book).

After reading this book, you will be able to use my Six Principles of Inclusive Language, which are based on the scientific concepts at the heart of linguistic anthropology, to confidently navigate whatever communication context you may find yourself in—now or in the future.

EVERYTHING YOU SAY

AFFECTS YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

People cause pain every day by using problematic language.

Most of the time, when people are causing pain it’s because they don’t realize how their words are landing. Why is it so common for well-intentioned people to say hurtful things? It’s because most people haven’t been taught how language actually works.

I used to be one of those people. Even though I had been an English major in college and worked as a technical