Komunikacja egalitarna we współczesnej polszczyźnie

Abstrakt

The author’s research objective is to describe the phenomenon of communicative egalitarianism. The article presents remarks on contemporary nominative practices within national communities that recognize inclusivity as a social and linguistic value. The author addresses the question of how communicative practices in contemporary Polish reflect the egalitarian and identity-related tendencies characteristic of current public discourse. An important conceptual clarification introduced in the article concerns the distinction between non-discriminatory language and egalitarian language. The former is applied to members of different racial or ethnic groups within a dominant community, while the latter is primarily used in reference to women within a male-dominated public discourse. The article is organized into four thematic sections, each corresponding to a distinct communicative domain: 1) Institutional communication grounded in respect for the addressee; 2) Communication respecting sexual and romantic orientation; 3) Communication acknowledging and respecting femininity; 4) Communication sensitive to neurodiversity. The author conducts a reconnaissance of spoken and written language practices corresponding to these four categories. The first category encompasses practices related to the use of noun doublets referring to persons, collective nouns, and various forms of linguistic neutralization. In written communication, this includes the use of keyboard symbols such as the underscore (_) and the slash (/), which serve as graphic markers of gender inclusivity. This group also includes initiatives such as the Jasnopis project, which promotes clarity, accessibility, and inclusivity in public and institutional communication. The second category includes the use of noun endings such as -e and -u, as well as the verbal inflectional particle -u employed as an alternative to gender-marked verb forms. These morphological strategies serve to neutralize grammatical gender and promote greater inclusivity in reference to individuals of diverse sexual and romantic orientations, x-forms, xatives, dukaisms, personatives. The third category comprises feminine noun forms and feminatives, which serve to linguistically represent and affirm women’s presence and agency within public and professional discourse. The fourth category includes expressions that distance the description from the individual, favoring person-first formulations such as a verbally diverse person or a person with neurodivergent experience.