The SVP National Councilor Therese Schläpfer wants to ban gender-appropriate language at federal universities. It reacts no better than the university language police.
The Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur has a new language guide, and it has it all. The paper, which was drafted by the Diversity Office and signed by the rector of the university, gives teachers the freedom to define gender-appropriate language as an evaluation criterion. If you don’t change or change incorrectly, you can be penalized with a point deduction.
The guideline is not only a nuisance in terms of language («in general, it should be noted that there are no limits to the creativity of those who formulate it – apart from the orthographic ones»). It is also questionable whether a point deduction is legally permissible at all. The Zurich SVP National Councilor Therese Schläpfer was so upset with the code that she had to make an advance to get some air. In a parliamentary initiative, she calls for the “new gender language” to be banned at least at the universities run by the federal government. The colon, asterisk, and participle variants only confused the students and distracted them from studying. In addition, “students will understand less and less old texts in the future, which does not help technical progress”.
In terms of content, Therese Schläpfer is not entirely wrong. Not only old texts are understood less and less. Even house inscriptions in which the word Mohr occurs, or Othello film adaptations are only rarely classified with historical expertise or just out of curiosity about contemporary history.
The zeitgeist does not want to deal critically with the past, it wants to condemn it. University of Michigan composer Bright Sheng shocked a music class recently with clips from the 1965 film adaptation of “Othello,” starring black-faced Laurence Olivier in the title role. The trigger warning before blackfacing, which the professor issued before the film started, was of no use to him. The result was a shitstorm and an open letter to the university management.
Fortunately, Swiss universities are not that narrow-minded. But the urge for unsuspicious direct current is great. Students of the humanities and social sciences have now internalized the politically correct nominative plural artificial pause so much that they even have to hand in a gurgling glottic beat followed by “inside” after every “captain” at aperitifs. Radio speakers do the same at public broadcasters. The couples are so penetratingly formed and art-paused that the people in front of the recipients are probably reluctant to stick to the generic masculine noun.
Language modes have always existed. For example, German owes the beautiful word “moment” to the language societies of the Baroque era, which wanted to put an end to the moment of Latin origin. Few terms from the 17th-century language purifiers have survived. Gender language will not prevail either. Anyone who has ever overheard logisticians at mid-morning or Appenzell women’s gymnastics clubs on their way to the Olma knows that.
Most of the time, those who change do not want to make a contribution to a “fairer” language, but they – or they – want to belong. They belong to the elite of university graduates who use their artificial language as lecturers at universities, as civil servants in administrations, as employees in NGOs and as parliamentarians in the National Council, where they set standards for other politically sensitive academics.
So should gender language be banned, as Therese Schläpfer is demanding? no Because anyone who supports such advances makes the same mistake as the Winterthur language police, who want to punish missing colons with a point deduction. Critical thinking is encouraged neither with nor with prohibitions. It can only arise when opposing attitudes collide.
The Nebelspalter recently complained that a conspicuous number of Marxist debating circles were again emerging at Swiss universities. The editors of the conservative newspaper should actually be happy. Universities need political and ideological diversity. Liberals and Marxists have always gotten along surprisingly well. Critical thinking connects.