Between visibility and neutralisation: inclusive language in job advertisements of German-speaking Swiss universities

Abstract

This article examines language inclusivity in academic job advertisements of German-speaking Swiss universities. The research illuminates the progressive shift toward gender equity in academic recruitment while underscoring the complex linguistic and administrative challenges of standardizing institutional communication, highlighting possible inconsistencies between the university, cantonal and national levels. Analysing a dedicated corpus of vacancy notices, the paper evaluates how institutional gender-sensitive language guidelines are implemented in practice. After a description of the structure and main features of such guidelines and of the text type considered, the analysis categorizes inclusive approaches into visibility strategies (primarily full splitting and synthetic forms based on neographies) and neutralisation strategies (including collective nouns, epicenes, passive constructions, and nominalised participles). The empirical findings reveal that despite a strong institutional commitment to non-discriminatory communication, the generic masculine form partially persists, causing sometimes internal stylistic inconsistencies within the text genre. To resolve these compliance gaps, the study explores practical text-rewriting methodologies utilizing digital lexicographical resources like the Genderwörterbuch.