Language and power relations: the relatively arbitrary controversy of non-binary language

Abstract

The present study proposes a reflection on the Portuguese language and the power relations that constitute it, taking non-binary language as an object of consideration and its possible points of convergence with the text The language – instructing new worlds/new words, published in the book Teaching how to transgress: education as a practice of freedom, by Hooks (2013). To this end, a dialogue is sewn with other authors who are dedicated to the subject, with the intention of contributing to the theoretical movements of rupture with the tainted single understanding of the language – the hegemonic one – and reinforce the need to change our way of thinking about the that belongs to the way we manipulate certain lexicons in the social locus. Arguments are based on the epistemological concept of Foucault (1979), concerning the notions of power, starting from the “erasure” of the congenital human multiformity of conservative convictions, perpetuated in acts immanent to colonial thought. It adds to the contributions of Kilomba (2019), which reframe the systematic way in which we see discourse and its semiotic weight, in the effigy of avant-garde despised by institutions that are, by conjecture, majority. With the purpose of adding to linguistic studies, the article sets out to assess the value of the so-called non-binary language in Brazilian law and its reverberations in the school environment, based on validation mobilizations and stoppage of public policies aimed at its control. Finally, there is talk of media bias, purposeful or contingent, correlated to “gender ideology” and its impact on the evolution of societal agreements relevant to pluriculturalism.