Development of and Evaluation Tool for Assessing the Use of Inclusive Language: An Institutional Perspective

Abstract

Inclusive language must take into account speakers of any origin, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, race or religion. This is especially relevant in plural contexts, such as those found in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Given the significant place of inclusive language in Higher Education, there is a need to delve deeper into the keys to inclusive language. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to develop an evaluation tool to analyze and describe (gender-)inclusive language, from an institutional language perspective, more specifically, from the perspective of Spanish public universities. An evaluation framework has been developed to assess the presence of inclusive language in different types of texts, including linguistic elements, as well as non-linguistic elements (images, videos, design, etc.). This tool has opened future lines of research, such as, analyzing inclusive language in texts of different genres, produced in different fields and covering different topics. Moreover, this tool helps to offer a description of the characteristics of institutional inclusive language in Higher Education in Spain.