Adopting inclusive language in your everyday life

As a result, AlphaGroup’s TIDE committee hosted an all-staff training session for team members to learn about the usage and importance of inclusive language, discuss why it is important, and determine how it is best used in a professional setting. They presented ways to incorporate this type of language in daily speech and small ways that we can make active changes, not just in our business relationships, but in our home and social lives as well.

Some easy ways to incorporate inclusive language into your daily life are:

• Use greetings that contain all-inclusive terms such as “everyone” or “team” instead of “ladies and gentlemen”
• Introduce yourself with your pronouns if comfortable
• Adopt singular “they” when pronouns are unknown or ask for clarification
• Ask for pronunciation of first and last names when unfamiliar to you
• Instead of asking questions such as “Do you have kids?” or “Do you have a husband?”, use open language such as “tell me about your family”; this will allow the person you are addressing to answer in any way they feel comfortable
• Avoid stereotypes
• Opt for “partner” instead of “husband/wife” when inquiring about another person’s marital or relationship status
• Instead of using slang with historical implications, say what you actually mean
  • Instead of saying “Spirit Animal,” which can be an offensive oversimplification of indigenous communities, say “kindred spirit”
  • Instead of saying “Ghetto,” which has historical meanings relating to both genocide and race, say what you mean by choosing phrases like “low-income neighborhood”