On the heels of LGBTQ+ Pride Month and amid the continuing Black Lives Matter movement, it is important to take a look into the power our language has to either include or exclude others. Understanding and using inclusive language is essential to creating spaces that support a more diverse workforce. Inclusive language better recognizes humanity and respect for our colleagues and allows them to bring their full authentic selves to the workplace.
In her article, “How to Use & Promote Inclusive Language at Your Organization,” Caroline Forsey, a staff writer for HubSpot’s marketing blog, defines inclusive language as language that “avoids biases, slang, or expressions that discriminate against groups of people based on race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Inclusive language allows you to resonate with more audiences by speaking and writing in more impartial ways.”
Often our implicit biases enter the workplace and manifest in the ways that we talk about people. Learning about inclusive language shines a light onto these biases as we learn the ways that our language creates a barrier to the success of others.
Here are five ways you can make your language more inclusive:
- Refer to a theoretical person as “they” instead of “he” or “she” – This is a best practice to begin to disassociate gender from traditionally gendered professions such as doctors and engineers. In addition, this is particularly important when speaking to colleagues about their romantic partners to avoid assuming their sexuality.
- Ask individuals for their pronouns to avoid guessing – Misgendering, or placing the incorrect gender on a colleague, can make the workplace feel like a hostile environment. Asking everyone, including cisgender people (whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth), to share their pronouns helps to create a more welcoming space for non-cisgender coworkers.
- Use people first language – People first language addresses the humanity of an individual before the other qualities about them. Examples of people first language are, “people with autism,” “people experiencing homelessness” and “people of color.” “People should be referred to as people as often as possible,” says Cristi Hegranes.
- Stop using mental illness as an adjective – Mental health should be regarded seriously, and not downplayed as a descriptor for weather that changes rapidly or the urge you have to clean everything in your office. Applying mental health in this way trivializes these diseases.
- Do not tell women and non-white coworkers they are “well-spoken” or “articulate” – While you may be impressed with their job performance or public speaking abilities, these adjectives perpetuate misogynistic and racist stereotypes of these colleagues as less educated than white men.
As we move to make changes in the ways we address and talk about others, it is important to recognize missteps and act to quickly correct them. This list of five changes to language only scratches the surface on the ways we can make our language more inclusive to people of different identities.