Débat : La langue française a-t-elle un genre ?

I will see you on Saturday 16 January 2027 at 16:00 in the Salle Chêne of the Cité internationale de la langue française, 1 place Aristide Briand in Villers-Cotterêts, for a ninety-minute debate on the place of the feminine in the way French speakers express themselves.

The starting point: the Académie française currently defines the masculine gender as « neutral » to justify using it for both genders. Is that really so? Do our habits make French a masculine language? Which rules could promote equality between the sexes and help the language evolve? What does the history of French say on this, and how are artificial intelligence systems handling the question?

Around the table: Anne Abeillé, linguist and member of the Linguistes atterrées collective; Éliane Viennot, professor emerita of Renaissance literature at Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne; Guillaume Wisniewski, computer engineer, PhD in artificial intelligence and senior lecturer at Université Paris Cité; and Pascal Gygax, psycholinguist at the University of Fribourg. The discussion is chaired by Suzanne Lesage, linguist at the University of Fribourg.

Admission is free, with booking, and open to all audiences.