Feature
Jesus, Son of Humankind?
The Necessary Failure of Inclusive-Language Translations
by Paul Mankowski, S.J.
The dispute concerning the existence and extent of gender-exclusivity in natural languages, the relation of such exclusivity to sexism, and the use of so-called inclusive language as a remedy for such exclusion has been heightened in recent years by controversy surrounding the use of inclusive language in translation. This is especially true for the translation of texts considered to be, in some sense, “common property”: the works of ancient authors and other classics, traditional songs and carols, national documents of foundational stature, etc. In the case of new renderings of the Bible and of liturgical texts the passions of the disputants run particularly deep, for the obvious reason that all parties to the dispute recognize that more than sentiment or aesthetics is at stake. 1
The purpose of this essay is fivefold: (1) to lay out the arguments of the adversaries in a clear light; (2) to demonstrate that only one of the rival accounts is tenable on linguistic grounds; (3) to elucidate the function of unmarked forms in general and their distribution in English in particular; (4) to examine the problems caused by the employment of inclusive-language devices in actual texts; and (5) to argue that the failure of such devices is inevitable, and not simply the failure of maladroit translators. The discussion necessarily centers on the use of inclusive language in English, itself a linguistically important fact. I shall principally use biblical and Roman Catholic liturgical texts to illustrate my remarks; however, with one exception, my arguments presume no specifically theological interests or allegiance, and the conclusions apply to translation generally.
Terms & Evidence
Few of the participants in the inclusive-language debate will deny that what can broadly be called “sexual politics” has awakened new sensibilities to locutions that thirty years ago were unproblematic.2 All parties to the dispute agree that a change has occurred. However, there are competing and contradictory accounts of this phenomenon, differing fundamentally as to the nature of the pertinent change. The claim advanced by inclusive-language proponents is this:3
Formerly, words like “man,” “he,” “his,” and so forth could be understood in the appropriate context to refer to females as well as males. A change has occurred in the meaning of such words in English; they are no longer understood to be inclusive of females. Consequently, continued use of the generic—“God wished to save all men”—is understood to mean “complacuit Deo salvos facere omnes viros.” This is an evolution in the language that must be respected, even in translation.
The counter-claim is this:
“Man,” “he,” etc., have precisely the same range of meaning today that they had in 1975 and 1675. No pertinent change has occurred in the language per se. What has changed is the social and political valence of the generic employment of these expressions; a taboo (that is, a supra-linguistic phenomenon, external to the grammar of the speaker) has been attached to the generic usage. Confronted with the sentence, “God wished to save all men” almost everyone will understand it to mean “complacuit Deo salvos facere omnes homines,” but many hearers will feel resentment that the taboo was not honored. Just as Mussolini attempted to stigmatize the Lei form of polite address as effeminate and un-Italian,4 so too generic “man” has been stigmatized for political reasons.
A natural language (as opposed to an artificial construct like a computer language) is constantly in a state of flux, in that the “rules” that make for intelligibility are constantly being renegotiated through the innumerably many speech-acts taking place between the speakers of a language. Not every facet of a language changes at the same rate, however, and most changes, even changes in semantics, are too subtle and gradual to be noticed until well after they have taken place. The inclusivist thesis is a claim that the meanings of particular English words have changed, specifically that some of their older meanings have been lost.
How can we know that the meaning of a given word has changed? What counts as evidence for a purported change? We can judge that change in meaning has occurred when two conditions are met: When classes of speakers insulated from taboos or indifferent to them spontaneously employ the new usages, and when cognitive errors spontaneously multiply when and where the older usage is maintained.
Paul Mankowski is a lector in Biblical Hebrew at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. He has published Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew (Harvard Semitic Studies #47).
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