Hi all!
We did a lot of thinking about language during Pride Month, especially the language we use in ordinary moments - not just while the world is celebrating Pride but beyond that into every day.
How do we greet a room? What assumptions we make about someone’s partner? Which words do we choose on forms, in meetings, in emails, in passing conversations?
On their own, these moments can seem small. They are easy to dismiss as habit, or shorthand, or something nobody intended badly. We’ve learnt through our work that belonging is built through repetition in the smallest of moments. It comes from thousands of repeated moments through which people feel either included or othered. The language we choose is one of those repeated moments.
Hopefully you’ll have seen how visible Pride was last month and the weekend just gone: flags, parades, celebration and colour. But its history is also about people having to fight to be seen, recognised and safe. For many LGBTQIA+ people, visibility has never been a simple thing. It has often involved calculation. How much of myself can I show here? What will happen if I correct that assumption? Will this change how people see me?
That calculation has a history. In Britain, Polari was once used by parts of the LGBTQIA+ community as a coded language. It helped people recognise one another, build connection and speak with a degree of safety in a world where being openly queer could carry serious consequences. Language was practical. It helped people find each other and it helped people survive.
We could say therefore that language has always been tied to safety and belonging. In the past, coded language helped some LGBTQIA+ people navigate environments where openness could be dangerous. Today, the question is whether our everyday language makes openness feel safer, or whether people still find themselves editing, hiding and translating parts of who they are.
I think this is where inclusive language is often misunderstood. It can get framed as political correctness, or as a set of rules designed to catch people out. We do not recognise that as the real purpose of it. The point is not to make conversation more anxious. The point is to reduce the number of assumptions people have to carry.
That might mean saying ‘partner’ instead of assuming ‘husband’ or ‘wife’. It might mean saying ‘everyone’ rather than ‘ladies and gentlemen’. It might mean respecting someone’s pronouns without turning it into a debate. It might mean correcting ourselves briefly when we get something wrong and not making our embarrassment the centre of the moment.
The cost of not paying attention is not shared equally. Some people move through workplaces without having to explain their family, identity, body, name, background or relationship. Others become used to translating themselves into language that feels more acceptable to the room. Over time, that takes energy. Energy that could have gone into contribution, creativity, connection or leadership.
This is why we think inclusive language belongs in conversations about culture, not just communication. The words people hear repeatedly become part of how they understand what is normal here. They tell people who was expected before they arrived. They tell people whether difference will be treated as awkward, interesting, threatening or simply human.
Of course, language on its own will not create an inclusive workplace. People notice very quickly when the words are right but the behaviours are not. But language is one of the places where culture shows itself most often. It is also one of the places where we can practise something different.
So perhaps now is a useful moment to pay attention to the ordinary language around us. Where do we use default language or make assumptions? What phrases have we inherited from a different time? Could we identity the small moments where a different word might make it easier for someone else not to shrink?
Polari tells us something powerful about the past: language helped people belong when belonging had to happen in hidden ways. Today, our workplaces should not require hiddenness.
And that leaves us with a fairly simple question to take beyond Pride Month - How can our language make it easier for people to show up (and when does it inadvertently suggest that they hide?).
We’ve put together an Inclusive Language guide to support you - download it here.
Rox x