Writing by principles: German-speaking newspaper guidelines and the use of non-binary gender-fair language

Abstract

Previous research into the use of gender-fair noun references in German-speaking newspapers has found an overall increase in the use of gender-fair language (GFL) over the last decade. This trend also extends to the non-binary asterisk and colon. The increased integration of these controversial forms of GFL may suggest that newspaper authors and editors have been placing more importance on gender-related issues. It is therefore unsurprising that, particularly in recent years, more editorial offices have published official guidelines or statements regarding their use of GFL. While some previous studies on the use of GFL in German-speaking media have touched on language guidelines and official statements, a systematic overview that contextualises the use of GFL and published guidelines is lacking. Thus, the aim of this paper is to address this research gap by examining recent official language guidelines and statements from selected German-speaking newspapers and contextualising them with actual GFL usage frequency. To achieve this, newspapers both supporting and opposing the use of special characters were chosen, and the frequency of selected forms of GFL was analysed through a corpus-based study and subsequently compared. The results indicate that newspapers with official guidelines supporting non-binary forms tend to use these forms more frequently. However, the use of such forms is in decline in the selected newspapers, while it is still increasing – albeit at lower frequency levels – in newspapers whose guidelines do not support non-binary forms. Hence, the findings suggest that the relationship between guidelines and GFL usage in the media is far from being straightforward.