Journalists as Mindful Users of Language (Change): Gender-Inclusive Spanish in Argentinian News

ABSTRACT In Argentina, arguably a front-runner country in efforts to challenge linguistic sexism, a wide variety of gender-inclusive styles are visible across and within the news media. This suggests that Argentinian journalists’ language does not simply accommodate to structural pressures, as the literature would indicate. To attend to journalists’ agency in processes of sociolinguistic change, this study combines the analysis of news articles with in-depth interviews with their authors, fifteen Argentinian news practitioners working for nine media organizations. The results challenge, first, ideas of journalists as necessarily conservative language users: Interviewees use diverse linguistic varieties when mentioning human referents (ranging from the generic male to indefinite collective nouns and duplication to the non-binary endings -x and -e). Second, mediacentric perspectives—assuming that institutional socialization, professional values, and audiences’ expectations shape journalists’ language—prove limited. Interviewees’ linguistic choices also respond to personal gender and linguistic politics. Argentinian journalists’ meaningful reasons and strategies for deviating from sociolinguistic norms expand our understanding of journalism’s potential to challenge traditional dominant cultural institutions and machismo more generally.

Argentina has been recognized as a leading country in the struggle for a gender-inclusive Spanish, according to both academic accounts (Hall, Borba, and Hiramoto 2021b;Tosi 2021) and international news (Politi 2020;Ruiz Mantilla 2019;Schmidt 2019).This development has been closely linked to recent LGBTIQ+ activism and feminist movements against gender-based violence and supporting the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Law.However, gender-inclusive language in Argentina extends beyond activism (Tosi 2021); a "fierce debate" 1 about it has reached society at large (Politi 2020).
Teachers (Banegas and López 2021), academics (Schmidt 2019), book publishers (Giammatteo 2020), high school students (Cardelli 2018), politicians, and governmental officers (Politi 2020) have been recognized as key actors in language reform in Argentina.This paper shifts the focus toward journalists: What role do they play in the struggle for gender-inclusive language?We review and go beyond the literature, which understands journalists' language use as conservative, tied to standardized demands (Cottle 2000;Peterson 2003), and thus, at odds with gender-inclusive efforts.We question the idea that non-standard language use is rare in the news and, if present, just a response to pressures that journalists face (Androutsopoulos 2014;Cotter 2014).This determinism, we argue, cannot account for the diverse language in Argentinian news.By examining stories published across various news outlets and interviewing their producers, we demonstrate the value of an ethnographic approach to recognize journalists' agency in their language usage.
The paper starts by bringing into dialogue feminist and queer linguists' perspectives on linguistic and social change and in relation to Spanish.We then turn to the role ascribed to journalism in sociolinguistic change and explain why the Argentinian context lends itself to this study.This sets the stage for our analysis of journalists' practices concerning gender-inclusive language and of how they understand and justify those practices.

Feminist Perspectives on Language and Social Change
Concerns about the role of language in gender inequality are not limited to contemporary Argentina.Feminist linguistics has, at least since the 70s, documented and challenged linguistic sexism in its multiple forms (Hall, Borba, and Hiramoto 2021a;Motschenbacher 2012;Pauwels 2003), including offensive language, uneven conversational practices, and linguistic androcentrism.
Linguistic androcentrism-also known as "he/man language" (Cameron 1985, 84) and the "male as norm rule" (Spender 1980, 3)-has attracted particular attention.It concerns the use of the masculine as the standard gender, whereby everything that is non-male becomes invisible or a deviation (Spender 1980).In multiple languages, the masculine form has been traditionally used as the unmarked gender when a subject's gender is unspecified (e.g., a writer always finishes his M book).Defended by some as serving functional economy (Álvarez de Miranda 2018), feminists link this to a patriarchal symbolic system and advocate for change (Spender 1980;Suardiaz, Aliaga Jiménez, and Burgos 2002).
Although initially studies of linguistic androcentrism emphasized the subordinate position of the female gender, recent approaches also question binarism in linguistic structures.Inspired by queer theory and the growing visibility of the sexual diversity community, gender and language studies today also discuss masculine-feminine distinctions and their cis-heteronormative bias (Cardelli 2018;Motschenbacher 2012).
Critics of linguistic androcentrism have advanced various perspectives on language's relationship with social inequalities.For materialist feminism, linguistic discrimination is symptomatic of broader structural inequalities; for relativists, language shapes individuals' understanding of the world.Yet, both approaches agree on the importance of linguistic change (Cameron 1985;Cardelli 2018;Spender 1980;Suardiaz, Aliaga Jiménez, and Burgos 2002) and thus "on the need for linguistic action" (Pauwels 2003, 554).Some strategies to expose sexist biases and propose changes break with established morphological and grammatical conventions (e.g., herstory instead of history; she as the generic pronoun) (Cameron 1985).Other strategies rely on existing forms, like gender-neutralization, which minimizes references to gender by using a single neutral form for all referents (e.g., chairperson for chairman), and double gender marking or feminization, which makes gender explicit through gender splitting (e.g., replacing "he" with "he or she") (Abbou 2011;Pauwels 2003). For Pauwels (2003), those implementing these strategies assume two types of roles: Norm-breakers subvert existing rules, while normmakers re-appropriate the role of language regulators, historically occupied by men, formulating guidelines and urging institutions to adopt them.Norm-makers, according to Pauwels (2003, 551), pose "clearly the strongest challenge, if not threat, to male authority in language regulation." While these discussions apply to many speech communities, the forms linguistic sexism takes vary across languages (Cameron 1985;Hellinger and Pauwels 2007).Likewise, the strategies employed to challenge sexism depend on the characteristics and prescriptivism of the language to be changed (Pauwels 2003).This underscores the importance of extending research on language and gender beyond (currently dominant) English (Hellinger and Pauwels 2007;Kristiansen 2014;Motschenbacher 2012).

Spanish's Androcentric Norm
Questioning the sexist features of Spanish poses its own challenges, given this language's deeply ingrained norms for grammatical gender and the strong opposing reactions that non-standard usages arouse.The required gender agreement between nouns, adjectives, and articles makes the use of the masculine as standard considerably evident in Spanish.For example, the noun "estudiantes" (students) is gender invariable, but its accompanying article is necessarily gender-marked as either las F or los M estudiantes. 2According to dominant rules, the masculine morpheme -o must be used when referring to linguistic units of unspecified gender, for example, "alguien es ciudadano M " (someone is citizen), and to groups of referents of mixed genders, as in "los M ciudadanos M " (the citizens), even if the group comprises mostly women (Suardiaz, Aliaga Jiménez, and Burgos 2002).
The use of these varieties has changed over time.The -@ became widespread with the rise of the internet but failed to challenge the masculine-feminine binary (if interpreted as an -o containing an -a) and to be pronounceable (Bengoechea 2011;Garazi 2014).Following queer activists' usage, the -x begun to replace it in the 2000s (Garazi 2014).Although still popular in written Spanish, this alternative also hinders pronunciation.The ending -e has been one of the most popular alternatives in Argentina since the 2010s (Lagneaux 2018;Papadopoulos 2022).For some, the -e is neutral and covers all gender possibilities (e.g., "les I ciudadanes I votan" (the citizens vote)); for others, it is a third category, alongside the masculine and feminine, representing non-binary gender identities (e.g., ciudadanos M , ciudadanas F y ciudadanes N ) (Cardelli 2018).
The efforts to fight Spanish's gender asymmetry have been vigorously rejected by individual language users and cultural institutions, most notably, the Royal Spanish Academy (henceforth RAE, for Real Academia Española).Since the eighteenth century, the RAE has supplied the official version of "good Spanish" to speakers worldwide (Bengoechea 2011, 38).Still today it assumes the role of preserving the language's "essential unity … throughout the Spanish-speaking world" (RAE 2021), even though most former Spanish colonies also have their own language academies.The RAE's authority is widely recognized by Spanish speakers who, at least in Argentina today, continue to regard it as the main normative authority for linguistic usages, including gender-related ones (Zucchi 2014).
With only eleven women academic members in its 310 years, the RAE has been a vocal opponent of gender-inclusive uses of language, which, it argues, "confuse grammar with machismo" (Pérez 2018).Specifically, for the RAE, the endings -@, -e, and -x are "alien to the morphology of Spanish" (RAE 2020, 74); gender splitting harms linguistic economy; and indefinite collective nouns are overelaborate and ridiculous (Álvarez de Miranda 2018; Bengoechea 2011).For Bengoechea (2011), the RAE's resistance has constrained non-sexist language use in Spain.This may be different in other Spanish-speaking countries.Indeed, Papadopoulos (2022) argues that Spanish is one of the languages with the most gender-inclusive innovations and links resistance to a colonially imposed language with resistance to imposed binary gender categories.This link encourages attention to Spanish outside Spain: Focusing on uses of non-standard varieties in a Latin American country responds to calls within language and gender research to turn the attention toward the South and toward decolonial tactics to reconstruct language, gender and sexuality (Singh 2021).
In Argentina, as mentioned above, struggles in the linguistic realm have played a key role in recent feminist movements.Even though the country is considered a front-runner in gender-inclusive Spanish, these efforts have often faced, sometimes violent, opposition.Users of -x and -e, the most used genderless endings, have received insults in social and mass media along with demands to respect the RAE (Cardelli 2018).Attempts to ban gender-inclusive language in schools (Iglesias 2022) further underscore that this remains a highly contested issue.We thus expect Argentinian journalists to face specific and complex challenges in their language use.As we discuss below, scholarship offers limited insights in this respect.

Sociolinguistic Change, Gender, and the News
Seldom has research on journalists' role in linguistic change specifically focused on gender equality.We thus draw on two broader sets of relations that have received scholarly attention: (news) media and gender; and (news) media and linguistic change.
The literature on media and gender points to what Byerly (2008, 257) has called the "paradigm of the misogynist media."Specifically regarding Latin-America and the Caribbean, Higgins et al. (2008) described marked inequalities between men and women in newsrooms and news coverage.Research about Argentinian news media has also observed significant androcentrism (Amado 2017;Cabas-Mijares 2022;Mitchelstein et al. 2020;Rovetto 2013) and resistance to changes.As Andelsman and Mitchelstein (2019, 469) concluded from their analysis of two decades of newspaper coverage of women's rights, a key problem is "the persistence of cultural and professional patterns that marginalize stories about women's rights issues on media."According to these studies, the uneven composition of newsrooms, as well as professional and institutional norms arguably shape the content of the news produced.
Research on media and sociolinguistic change, in turn, has seen the mass media as "a centripetal domain whose potential influence basically amounts to promoting standardization" (Androutsopoulos 2014, 25).Journalists' language has been assumed to follow "economic and institutional requirements" (Fowler 1991, 42) and to be "conservative, prescriptive, and mainstream" (Cotter 2010, 187).Even research identifying non-standard language in written news, has explained it in terms of journalists' conformity, this time, with sociolinguistic attitudes already existing in society: Journalists allegedly accommodate their language to cultural structures, social expectations, and audience assessments (Androutsopoulos 2014; Cotter 2014).In her analysis of inclusive language use in Argentina, for example, Tosi (2021, 11) interpreted the non-standard ending -e in some Página/12 headlines as an "ideological wink to the target audience of the newspaper, … usually configured as a 'progre' (progressive) reader, open and sensitive to social and gender matters." We observe here interrelated methodological and conceptual limitations.Methodologically, most studies about news media and sociolinguistic change-like most research on journalistic production in general (Peterson 2003;Schrøder 2007)-have only examined texts, mainly news stories and style-guides (Androutsopoulos 2014;Cotter 2014;Fasold 1987).Like in Tosi's analysis, journalists' intentions can be inferred from their publications, but not possibly confirmed (see also Awad 2014).
Conceptually, this understanding of journalism in relation to both gender and sociolinguistic change is marked by what Peterson (2003, 163) has called a "mediacentric" approach, which sees content as shaped by professional (standardized) routines and organizational demands and which reduces media producers "to mere agents and vehicles of the institutional structure, acting out predetermined roles."This approach does not only neglect journalists' agency, but also variation, contradiction and change in the news (Cottle 2000).It is no surprise, then, that "[w]omen's longstanding struggles to change mainstream media companies or media content … remain under-investigated phenomena" (Byerly 2012, 15).According to Byerly (2012), sexism in the media is a pressing problem, but should not be treated as unstoppable and omnipresent.
To avoid these deterministic shortcomings, we study journalists' gender-inclusive language use from a practice theory perspective (Ortner 2006).We understand that media, like all institutions, are shaped by social agents, who engage in conscious interventions, even if vis-à-vis powerful structural conditions (Ahearn 2001).As social agents, journalists can be expected to be "mindful" language users (Cotter 2014, 371).Their language practices, that is, should not be examined as the unequivocal result of institutional guidelines, but also in relation to journalists' own meaningful reasons and strategies for deviating (or not) from standardized language.Methodological approaches that attend to their agency, namely their "socioculturally mediated capacity to act" (Ahearn 2001, 112), shall lead to more nuanced and productive understandings of the relation between journalistic practice and linguistic change.

Context and Research Design
Argentina is a particularly interesting context for this study.There is worldwide recognition for the country's progressive legislations on gender and sexuality and the strength of feminist and LGBTQI+ movements (Gago 2019;Hall, Borba, and Hiramoto 2021b;Rovetto 2013).Notably, these movements have been sensitive to the importance of language and critical of the media in their struggles (Andelsman and Mitchelstein 2019).While the news media have been consistently characterized as androcentric, various outlets introduced a gender editor or ombudsperson in 2018-2019, even if a number of these positions have been discontinued.Moreover, Rovetto and Figueroa (2018) acknowledged the presence of "perio-feministas" alluding to how feminist journalists challenge male-dominated newsroom dynamics and agendas.Their interviews with "perio-feministas" from Rosario, Argentina, showed "the power and determination of their actions, but also the innumerable obstacles they have to go through to fight for their words" (Rovetto and Figueroa 2018, 5).Comparable efforts to examine journalists as agents acting upon sexist language across varied types of media organizations are missing.
Our study differs from research on news media's role in sociolinguistic change, which views news texts and style-guides as outcomes of journalists' structural constraints.To attend to journalists' role in the struggle for gender-inclusive language, it is necessary to integrate "institutional policies with individual agency" (Androutsopoulos 2014, 6).We thus drew on the success of ethnographic approaches centered on actors' linguistic practices to uncover their creative and strategic uses of language (Hall, Borba, and Hiramoto 2021a).In line with broader calls to study news production ethnographically (e.g., Awad 2014; Cabas-Mijares 2022; Cotter 2010), our methods acknowledged that journalists engage in their work not only as texts producers but also as producers of themselves, "as social persons in relation to others" (Peterson 2003, 162).To do this, we combined the analysis of 32 news articles (published in newspapers and online news media between 2017 and 2019) and fifteen in-depth interviews with the journalists who produced them.
Interviewees were sampled among news practitioners working in media organizations from the two largest Argentinian cities, Buenos Aires and Córdoba.The criterium for selection was to have written about gender issues as main topic (e.g., gender violence, abortion law, sexual abuse).We assumed that journalists who had written about these issues would be familiar with contemporary struggles for gender equality, including those regarding language.We expected these journalists to be aware of the availability of non-standard linguistic styles, irrespective of whether they used them.We focused on written-newspapers and online-news for two reasons.First, content-wise, most studies about gender and the news we reviewed also focused on written news media.Keeping that focus would allow us to engage with them more directly.Second, methodologically, written texts strengthened the study's feasibility, given that we wanted to re-read and discuss concrete journalistic output with the authors within a reasonable interview time.To capture a broad picture of practices and motivations, we sampled journalists working in a wide variety of print and online-only news organizations, with different editorial lines, structures, and reach.As this could also translate into different experiences regarding language use, interviewees performed different roles in these organizations (Table 1).Except for J11, all participants were women.
Twelve interviewees worked for generalist media Clarín, La Nación, Perfil, Página/12, La Voz del Interior, and Infobae."[R]egarded as reference news sites in Argentina," these media tend to give greater presence to male voices (Mitchelstein et al. 2020, 313).There are, however, important differences among them.Clarín belongs to the country's largest multimedia conglomerate, leads in online and offline circulation and revenue and has positioned itself as strong critic to the largest center-left party (Becerra, Marino, and Mastrini 2012).La Nación ranks second in circulation and is arguably aligned to the views of the upper liberal agricultural-business class (Espeche 2009;Mitchelstein et al. 2020).Página/12 is linked to center-left ideologies, targeting educated readers from the Argentinian middle and upper class (Zunino and Focás 2018).It owns feminist supplement Las12 and diversity supplement Soy.The weekly Perfil, aspires to do investigative journalism and was the first to incorporate an ombudsperson to ensure compliance with professional and stylistic standards (Amado Suarez 2008).Infobae is an online-only news outlet with editions in several Latin American countries (Meléndez Yúdico 2016).Although our sample reflects the high concentration of media production in the country's capital (Becerra, Marino, and Mastrini 2012), one interviewee worked for Grupo Clarín's La Voz del Interior.This regional publication from Córdoba is the most widely sold and visited online newspaper from outside Buenos Aires (Becerra, Marino, and Mastrini 2012;Mitchelstein et al. 2020).
Three interviewees worked for alternative outlets El Cohete a la Luna, LatFem, and Presentes.The first, a subscription-based online news portal, does political investigative journalism.LatFem advocates for a gender perspective in journalism, shows considerable representation of women and non-binary people in its staff composition and sources, and has joined activist collectives against gender violence (Cabas-Mijares 2022).Based in Buenos Aires, news agency Presentes covers gender and sexual diversity through a network of reporters across Latin-America and offers trainings and digital resources to "improve journalistic practices in coverage of gender and diversity issues" (Presentes 2022).
Upon acceptance of our interview invitation, we identified the 4-5 most recent articles by each participant, as their recency would facilitate the participant's recall of their choices at the time of writing.From that initial set, we retained in our sample only the texts that contained references to human subjects, irrespective of the variety used to refer to them.These ended up being 2-3 texts per interviewee, 32 in total.Prior to the interview, our analysis of the texts aimed at identifying strategies used by journalists to refer to people, the topics where certain linguistic features appeared, possible missed opportunities to use gender-inclusive varieties, and gender-related inconsistencies in writing style.After obtaining informed consent, interviews were conducted in person in April and May 2019 by the first author, herself Argentinian.Most interviews lasted between 50 and 70 min; three were shorter (27, 35 and 38 min) due to interviewees' availability.Interviews were substantially informed by our analysis of the sampled stories which, in turn, was enriched by the interviews.In all cases, copies of the articles were observed and discussed with the authors and used as prompts to ask how one or another variety had been chosen to refer to human subjects.

Findings
The analysis of the stories, presented in the first subsection, sheds light on the variability with which inclusive alternatives were used, often overturning assumptions about the outlet in which one would expect to find them.The other subsections are primarily informed by the interviews.Subsection 2 attends to professional and organizational pressures and the spaces journalists carved for their considerations and decisions.Subsection 3 focuses on the relationships that journalists strategically established through their text with their sources, the people covered in their stories, and others involved in the topic.Subsection 4 addresses journalists' relationships with their audience.

Variability in Language Use
The stories we analyzed contained both standard and non-standard language for mentioning human referents.The standard variety, namely, the generic masculine -o, was used by all interviewees in the sampled stories at least once.Asked about the non-standard varieties they used, interviewees distinguished two categories, which J14 called "the most widely accepted" and "the most objected varieties."Non-standard varieties that helped "avoid sexism" (J7) and that were considered the most socially accepted, were indefinite collective nouns-as in: "Casi la mitad de la infancia de nuestro país es pobre" ("Nearly half of our country's childhood is poor" replacing the gender-marked children) (Article by J6)-and gender splitting-as in: "oportunidades para niñas F y niños M " (opportunities for girls and boys) (Article by J8).
The most objected non-standard varieties, J8 explained, marked "a disruption in language."In the sample, they involved the endings -e, -x, and -@, for which interviewees generally reserved the label "inclusive language."15 of the 32 stories included, at least once, these non-standard varieties, specifically word endings -x and -e (as anticipated, the -@ only appeared once in a text about inclusive language).Consistently with expectations, non-standard varieties appeared in feminist and diversity outlets LatFem, Soy, and Presentes.However, we also found them in more traditional outlets, specifically, in Perfil and, the arguably most conservative La Nación, where J1 wrote "trabajar con amigues I " (to work with friends).Just as unexpectedly, we found the generic masculine in diversity-focused media.An article in Soy, for example, combined the ending -e and the generic masculine in the expression "entre niñes I y adultos M " (between children and adults).These uses challenged mediacentric views: neither did we find stark contrasts across ideologically different media organizations, nor homogeneity within (kinds of) media outlets.
Furthermore, individual journalists did not follow fixed patterns either.Most interviewees often alternated varieties across and within their articles.The example "entre niñes I y adultos M " shows this heterogeneity, also observed in an article from Página/12, where J12 wrote "alumnes I " (students), "lxs I chicxs I " (the kids), and "guiados M " (guided); in an article from Clarín, where J3 combined "chicos M " with "niños M , niñas F y adolescentes N ;" and in La Nación, where J1 mentioned "alumnos M " and "compañeres I " (students; colleagues).This variability within a single text pointed toward diverse factors at play during writing.As J9 explained: I think that's what's interesting about the language that's called inclusive language, that it's done in the moment, and that while you're talking and using it, it's making you think about why I'm going to use that letter.
The diversity we observed in the texts made clear that standardized norms and organizational demands could, at most, partially account for journalists' language use.Interviewees turned our attention to (other) factors shaping their practices that could not be inferred from their texts and the media they worked for.As the sections below show, neither the use of standard language necessarily resulted from compliance with institutional pressures nor the use of non-standard varieties implied submission to sociocultural expectations.In both cases, those factors were intertwined with journalists' strategic, personal, and political choices.

Navigating the Journalistic Institution
In the interviews, journalists from both traditional and alternative media highlighted the influence of three institutional factors: the news organization's writing conventions, staff composition, and work precarity.These underscored that institutional and organizational conditions could contribute to linguistic standardization, but did not always operate in that direction.We observed concrete opportunities for contradiction and resistance, leading to actual change.
First, with respect to writing conventions, we found (explicit and implicit) shared criteria within the organizations.Whether leaning toward the standard language or its alternatives, these conventions were influential but not always decisive.In conservative generalist La Nación, journalists explained that editorial decisions regarding gender-inclusive language were not captured in style-guides (which, in general, interviewees considered outdated), yet staff knew they had to avoid non-standard varieties.J2, an external contributor, explained: "I never tried it, but I know they edit it if you do it … there are things that I don't offer in La Nación because I know they won't accept them, it's pointless."J1 also referred to the need to adapt to the institution: The identity of the medium, yes.It's something you have to respect because it's the place you work for.And that's what they teach you-that is, when you come in and-I read the newspaper, this newspaper, every day … I know how people write here, and I think it would be very hard for me to write in another way if I left one day.
Despite this awareness of the medium's style, participants also described instances in which, driven by their own motivations, they did not comply with that style or even helped changing it.J12 explained that not long before our interview, Página/12 editors only accepted disruptive varieties in Las12 and Soy; not in the main section.Her account showed how journalists could consciously, and sometimes successfully, challenge organizational requirements over language: 3 I had arguments [with them] because they would erase it, "no, in the body [main section] it's a style decision, it's not used."And now, the -e fits in … I kept on trying.If they corrected it, they corrected it.I kept on insisting because I was reluctant to not being able to use it.And one day they didn't correct it anymore.
Interviewees working for the feminist and diversity media Latfem and Presentes, in turn, recognized shared criteria for using non-standard varieties.According to J14, in Latfem there was an implicit agreement on using the -x.As for Presentes, J15 explained that they expressly promoted uniformity across all their texts, even if in practice, they were not consistent.In one of her own articles, she used -x for all human referents, except for two adjectives ("curiosos M y atentos M ") that retained the generic masculine.J15 explained: As it is under construction, sometimes we are sloppy … that is something in which I correct myself … we can't drive people crazy either.I mean, if we are going to come to the agreement that we speak with x, then let's speak the whole story with x.You may overlook it because it's something we're not used to … But I don't want a story to have four types of inclusive language, I want it to have one.
Attempts to unify this outlet's language were affected by the second institutional factor we identified: staff composition.J15 mentioned international freelancers, whose own cultural and context-informed views on inclusive language often clashed with editorial guidelines.Other interviewees referred to the male prevalence in Argentinian newsrooms.In line with the literature (Amado 2017; Cabas-Mijares 2022; Mitchelstein et al. 2020;Rovetto 2013), our participants saw this prevalence as restricting linguistic uses.However, this did not determine language usage in a single direction either.
Another aspect of newsroom composition, which proved to be as or even more influential was age.Interviewees working in Latfem, La Nación, Clarín and Página/12 indicated that an organization with older staff was less likely to accept non-standard varieties in the news.J2 considered the (non) use of gender-inclusive varieties "a completely generational discussion" and explained how low staff turnover affects language use: "As long as these people [senior staff] remain screwed to their chairs … nothing will change … [there are] journalists who work in conservative media but they are young and therefore they tend to have a different communication." The staff's personal traits influenced not only news texts but also communication among colleagues.J1, a young female political reporter, who felt loyal to La Nación's traditional style, used gender-inclusive varieties in her personal communication.However, she avoided inclusive language when communicating via e-mail with her mostly men and older colleagues: I don't dare to write "estimades i " [dear] or with the -x … When I have to send them [emails] I feel like I'm talking to people who don't understand that and can judge me.It's like imposing yourself in a way that's not out there in the workplace, in the newspaper where I work, I take care of that-which is-it shouldn't be like that, but maybe I'm kind of scared.So, I keep the usual rules.
The language used was thus influenced by the composition of the organization's staff, especially journalists' gender and age.News organizations with prevalence of male and older staff members tended to adhere to standard language practices.Yet, the presence of women in these organizations-like most of our participants-allowed for the opportunity to question these established language norms.Despite her appreciation of the linguistic standards of her newspaper, J1, for example, said she often used gender splitting instead of the masculine standard.About a story where she wrote "el papá, la mamá" instead of los M padres M (the parents), she explained: In this case I'm sure I did it to get the mother in as well.And many times, I do my best to show the woman there, or I put the woman first and then the man.I definitely do that and I do it consciously when I'm writing.
The personal urge to show that women were involved in the reported story was a feeling also recalled by journalists from Clarín and Página/12.In Clarín, J3 had felt unsettled about the generic masculine; it didn't "make any sense" when writing about groups of specialists in which the majority were women.She thus switched to splitting (even aware that many readers could ridicule it).J12 also recalled that making women's role visible drove her to gender splitting in Página/12: The universal masculine was already making me uncomfortable … It made me angry to put [write] "diputados M " … I would [rather] write "diputadas F y diputados M ."That's when I started to feel that discomfort, because I said, well, most of them are women and we have to put "diputados M ." These interviewees pointed, first, to how the widely accepted varieties, like gender splitting, could be a means for explicitly including female individuals.They also indicated language use followed, partly at least, the individual journalist's own intentions and feelings.Several interviewees mentioned the effect of their own emotions of discomfort, anger, and even pain when writing, especially those who were not only women but also activists.J14 emphatically stated: "I can't write in totalizing masculine, not anymore, I can't do it, besides it doesn't come out … I can't do it.I mean, it hurts me." A third institutional condition that affected journalists' linguistic practices, together with editorial conventions and workforce composition, was work precarity.As explained by J7, journalists in Argentina feared jeopardizing their employment: With the current working conditions, every journalist has a very high level of self-censorship.That is, they pledge to themselves before messing up and running the risk of being fired, they stay within the limits they believe are set by their media.… There is no need for the editor to come and say "don't talk like that" … in a medium like Nación and in a medium like Página/12 … it is a matter of epoch, and it is a matter of the production conditions in which journalists are.We are probably all immersed in this logic in face of the lack of work.
We found that labor precarity had different possible effects on linguistic practices.On the one hand, as J7's quote above shows, it could lead to self-censorship and thus to the use of standard language in generalist media.Efficiency pressures and fast production times could also lead to the use of the standard generic masculine by journalists who strongly disagreed with it.Frequently, they just did not have enough time to devise alternative non-standard strategies for each case.Explaining the heterogeneous combination of varieties in one of her articles, J12 said: There's a lot of fantasy about how people work in the media.… we are quite in a precarious position, and everyone does what they can and many mistakes are made because there are very few of us and we are becoming more and more flexibilized.
Likewise, J8 explained the difficulty of using inclusive non-standard alternatives because of the different "news production times and formats."What may be possible in longer weekend articles-"that you can save, reread tomorrow, rethink … "-is not in daily writing work, or in radio and TV, where one has to "have the speed of light to think about the terms."The standard, as such, would tend to come out the fastest.
On the other hand, professional precarity sometimes facilitated variability in writing and thus, alternatives.As in the case of Presentes mentioned above, the participation of external contributors unaware of guidelines, could hinder the widespread use of specific varieties.Journalists from generalist media also recognized that outsourcing hindered the consistent use of the generic masculine.As explained by J6: External collaboration is sought because there is no money … the print media are supported by other resources and you cannot condition those resources by telling them the rules of publication.… Those who collaborate are given certain freedoms.So it may happen that in a publication you find some arbitrary things … people who work for free do what they want because if they are told-if they have to meet conditions-they do not collaborate.

Positioning the Subject of the Story
The subjects about whom our participants wrote their stories, an aspect missing in the existing literature, turned out to be key in deciding which language varieties to use.Asked about influences on specific language decisions, interviewees mentioned three kinds of subjects: sources, people talked about in news stories, and activists related to the topic.
First, interviewees across media mentioned a special reason that sometimes took precedence over institutional and personal preference: Respecting the identity, linguistic, and political choice of their sources.This consideration explained why the disruptive -e appeared when journalists used direct speech in mainstream conservative media.J13 explained: Asserting that person's right to be mentioned with the pronoun that she or he or they want is very important, because you must have the awareness of how that person wants to be mentioned.It's like a whole dimension of the question, of the journalistic work that wasn't there before.
Also in Perfil, J5, who explained that she and her colleagues "still write as one should write, as one should according to the RAE," had once written "otros M , otras F y otres I " (others) in the direct quote of a source.Asked about it, she emphasized her determination to maintain the linguistic usage of the source, in that case, a music band actively supporting (linguistic) gender inclusivity.Two interviewees writing for La Nación had similar motives to include the most objected varieties in their articles.J1 recalled once interviewing someone who identified as neither male nor female.Faced with the contradiction between La Nación's standards and her willingness to respect the source, she avoided personal pronouns and articles when possible.Otherwise, she marked them with citation marks and added footnotes."Since I couldn't use inclusive language in the article, I did a whole engineering so that I wouldn't have to say neither 'he' nor 'she' at any time" (J1).This "engineering" also included writing "otres I compañeres I " between quotation marks and mentioning that the source had requested inclusive language to be respected.Likewise, the other interviewee from La Nación justified including "todxs" (all) because "[w]hen it is a quote from a third party, you have to respect it" (J2).
Second, reflections about subjects mentioned in the stories, other than sources, could influence journalists' linguistic choices.Two interviewees who wrote in feminist and diversity media pointed to specific kinds of subjects who, in their view, warranted the generic masculine.J10 explained that when writing about the political struggles of certain groups, such as migrants, she preferred to use standard language not to impose on them a struggle that they may have not (yet) supported.J9, in turn, referred specifically to her use of "niñes I y adultos M " (children i and adults M ) in a story about child sexual abuse: In her view, those adults "do not deserve the -e … .we should not gift the -e to those who don't deserve it." A third type of subjects some interviewees considered in their language decisions were social groups, mostly activists, connected to the topics they covered.This is, for example, how J4-who worked in a generalist outlet and generally used standard languagereferred to activists: Activisms are making a super-interesting use of language and if we journalists can take it, and learn, and ask them, and in the article give all those explanations … let's ask them, those doing activism, who are reading theory, okay, why "lesbians" separated from "women'?"Why "trans" separated from "transvestites"? and then you explain it in the article and from there you start learning.
Close to half of the interviewees knew the perspective of LGBTQI+ and/or feminist collectives from the inside.They were part of these communities and learned new possible forms of expression in their contacts with activists.J10, for example, recalled: It took some time for the -e to emerge … Until I heard a trans comrade at a meeting, it was a trans masculinity talking with the letter -e … and I said "ahh! That's it!"… You learn from your comrades, from militancy.
Even interviewees who were not part of activist media or groups and worked in generalist media such as La Voz, Clarín and Perfil described spontaneous instances of learning about gender and language within the newsroom: Female colleagues closest to activism commonly became unofficially recognized as experts on the subject and consulted by their peers.

Relating to Audiences
Recognizing limitations in institutional pressures, Cotter (2014) has argued that journalists commonly respond to audiences' language expectations.Arguably social media have made these expectations particularly visible and, in many cases, threatening, especially for female journalists (Posetti et al. 2020).Also in this respect, we found reflexive consideration and complex decision-making among interviewees, as opposed to blind compliance.Journalists expressed awareness of their readers' likely stances on genderinclusive language.However, rather than simply accommodating to them, they adopted different strategies based on whether they prioritized, for example, effectively delivering an impactful story or provoking new questions and reflections in the reader.
First, sometimes journalists thought it was worth compromising in terms of inclusive language to secure the attention of all readers, even those reluctant to the argument or story posed.J4 described her Infobae readership as one that tended to react negatively to the themes she covered, namely, activism and discrimination.When writing a story about the abortion law, some of her sources were young pro-legalization activists who constantly used the -e.However, J4 reported their speech using the generic masculine and only clarified in a note that they had originally used the -e.Still doubtful about her decision, J4 imagined an average reader dealing with the -e: you would be reading the article and, instead of reading the girls' arguments, the only thing you would look at would be the -e, and you would say "what an idiot."[the girl] It would generate a kind of expulsive thing, but also make you stare at the -e and not listen to the arguments, the most interesting things … your gaze would go to the -e, and your discussion would become whether the -e or not the -e, and that was not the discussion … I felt that I was making them lose in arguments.
J4 was not the only one opting for standard language to secure a broad audience for an important story.Some journalists from alternative outlets had comparable experiences.For example, a journalist from LatFem who generally used inclusive varieties chose the generic masculine when writing a story about the murder of a girl to prioritize "the strength of the message" (J13).Similarly, J14 recalled once giving a talk about gender to a "very reticent, very opposing audience", and deciding to "strategically use the 'todos M ' in totalizing masculine" so that her audience would not raise a "barrier to listening." A second way interviewees used their impression of the audience's expectations was to disrupt their reading, surprise them, with the purpose of provoking new questions and reflections.As explained by J13, who had experience in both feminist and non-feminist media, challenging expectations was a way to bring a problem to the reader's attention: If I put an -x, it's because I want you to be surprised by the -x, annoyed by the -x … It's great because when you're talking, you're going to be like "oh, and this word I can't pronounce"?Well, notice: never in the history of humanity, of the Spanish language at least, were words invented to designate this mixed or diverse human group, I mean, there was only, there was … that patriarchy, right?Thus, while some interviewees identified indefinite collective nouns and gender splitting as useful for including women in the story; many agreed in that the most objected varieties (-e and -x) served to disrupt readers, making sexism explicit, encouraging debates, and raising awareness about structural asymmetries and unequal power relations.This also implied a distinction in the intentions that different varieties could fulfill.J8 underscored the advantage of the most objected varieties vis-à-vis the widely accepted ones: It is good to use forms that bypass the sexist connotation of language, it is great, but a form that bypasses it does not make it manifest.I think the process of making it manifest is good to explain why there are people who don't feel included when we talk about masculine generics or feminine generics, why there are people who don't fit in there … And that doesn't happen with forms that bypass it.That happens with disruptive things that generate pros, cons, anger, "language is being destroyed." The disruptive power to trigger debates was not only attributed to the most objected varieties but also to the inconsistent combination of different varieties.As J11 expressed, it was precisely the lack of standardization of gender-inclusive varieties, their function as an "anti-norm norm," what provoked questioning and debates about exclusions.
The possibility that it will continue bothering.… using it or not using it, like randomly, saying and not saying, -x sometimes and sometimes -e, and sometimes -i, and sometimes -a and -o … I don't know if that isn't its current situation and its The provoking-value of a lack of standard was also observed by other interviewees who celebrated the playfulness and fluidity of gender-inclusive language.J14 asserted that, for her, it was precisely change, rather than re-standardization, what characterized inclusive language: "One can use it in one way or another, or even use it and then not use it in the same conversation, and recover it, and that does not mean it is wrong."This perspective, in turn, adds nuance to our understanding of more conservative styles.As explained by J4 and J11 -in whose sampled articles we found no disruptive varieties-challenging linguistic standards was valuable, but not the only strategy for highlighting inequalities.As journalists and activists, they valued other tools for encouraging debate, such as writing stories about the struggles of minoritized communities.

Conclusion
The importance of challenging linguistic sexism has been stressed, for several decades, by activists and feminist linguists across disciplinary approaches and across linguistic communities.Our distinct interest in this paper was on the practices and motivations of journalists in Argentina in the late 2010s.This focus contributed to the literature in three important ways.First, journalists' role in struggles for gender-inclusive language has been largely absent from our understanding of the (news) media's relations to sexism and to linguistic conservativism.It has been a missing piece in our knowledge of journalists' role in processes of social change.Second, we moved beyond mediacentric assumptions, by relying on an ethnographic approach (Peterson 2003).Combining the analysis of texts and interviews with their authors helped recognize the complexities of journalists' everyday practices, their own positioning as social actors, and thus their agency as language users and producers.Third, by focusing on Argentina, we expanded research on gender and sociolinguistic change beyond the widespread attention to English.Given the RAE's normative authority over the use of Spanish, both self-proclaimed as well as attributed by many Argentinian Spanish speakers (Zucchi 2014), this case also offered insights into decolonial linguistic practices.
Extant literature would expect journalists' linguistic practices to simply reflect structural constraints (from the journalistic institution, their organization, or audience expectations).Our findings countered these assumptions.The journalists we interviewed weighed the constraints around them and relied on varied linguistic strategies to achieve different purposes.Gender specification, splitting, and neutralization emerged as common strategies when they aimed to bypass sexism and make visible the role of women in their stories.Yet journalists also valued the standard generic masculine for specific purposes, such as to strengthen an argument and to avoid imposing genderrelated struggles on groups engaged in other pressing issues.The non-standard endings -e and -x appeared across media and served different purposes.Their key value, for some interviewees, was disrupting linguistic norms (norm-breaking), which they prioritized over-or even against-establishing new ones (norm-making).This challenges the view of norm-making as most threatening to linguistic sexism (Pauwels 2003).In line with Motschenbacher's (2012) postructuralist framework (see also Abbou 2011), at least some journalists saw linguistic change as a possible strategy to generate surprise, irritation, and questioning among readers.Disruptive varieties -e and -x facilitated this intervention by demanding more time and effort to read (Zarwanitzer and Gelormini-Lezama 2023).Our participants' perspectives on language, then, were not limited to conceiving it as a cause or reflection of other social inequalities.They saw language as a versatile tool at users' disposal for a variety of purposes, from triggering questions in readers to qualifying actors in a certain way.
Our findings underscore the importance of attending to journalists' linguistic practices.Across linguistic communities, throughout and beyond Spanish, we can expect news producers to be mindful users of language and thus, possible agents of social change.However, the specific practices found in this study must be understood in relation to the study's context.Key here, as mentioned earlier, are characteristics of the Spanish language, as well as the prominence in contemporary Argentina of struggles for gender inclusion, in language and more broadly.Also worth consideration is the widespread characterization, by scholars and audiences, of Argentinian journalism as systematically biased (Boczkowski 2021).If Argentinian journalism, as Amado and Waisbord (2015, 60) have described it, lacks common principles because it is "fractured … across myriad lines-ideological, partisan, ethical, labor, economic," we could also expect it to be fractured linguistically.Notably, our findings do show variation, but not simply along the lines that divide media organizations ideologically and, importantly, not necessarily due to opposing visions on gender inclusion.In fact, the shared sensibility toward gender inclusion that we found among our interviewees-mostly women who have covered gender issues across diverse media and positions-challenges the alleged absence of common principles in Argentinian journalism (Amado and Waisbord 2015).
Our study offers promising avenues for examining the (linguistic) practices of journalists in other contexts.Its methodology and findings underscore the value of considering journalists' agency as language users and producers of social change.Further efforts to understand their role and practices should consider diverse linguistic, political, and media conditions.This could include examining other media formats, especially those including orality, and the practices of journalists working across different platforms.The comments by J8 on how production times affect the ability to use non-standard varieties are insightful in this regard; they stress the need to attend to the practices of journalists in audio(visual) formats, for example.Considering the particularities of Argentinian journalism and the constraints that Bengoechea (2011) found for the expansion of nonsexist language in Spain, future research could also compare linguistic practices in the media of other Spanish-speaking countries with different attitudes toward journalistic and cultural institutions-such as language academies-and activism.Attention to these different contexts, however, must be accompanied by an awareness that journalism does not simply reflect or react to given conditions.Journalists are agents, mindfully involved in the (re)production of those conditions and thus, in the possibility of social change.
Notes 1.This and other quotes from Spanish-language references and from interviews were translated by the authors.2. Subscripts M, F, I, and N refer to a word's grammatical gender: masculine, feminine, inclusive, or non-binary.3.In later communication J12 told us that, by 2023, the -e had become common throughout Página/12.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
raison d'être, which is to disturb, isn't it?Like questioning, which is what interests me the most: what it interrogates.In other words, what it points out … More than proposing an inclusion, for me, what it is doing is pointing out exclusions (J11).