Latinx isn’t a misprint. Whether it be labeled a proto- or neologism, the cross-lingual noun/adjective aims to transcend the male privilege in Latino and to unlink Latin@ from the channeled significations of a (feminine) and o (masculine) in Spanish. The gesture toward linguistic intersectionality stems from a suffix endowed with a literal intersection — x.
The root of neologism (neo = new; logos = logic/reason/thinking) is accurate: A new word is a new logic — and a new logic often requires a new word. As original lexes appear, they are put into hierarchies aside already-codified equivalents, tested and probed in various contexts, and re-examined over time and across media.
Latinx is often — though not exclusively — used in English. The word invites us to rethink some of the philosophic, communicative, and linguistic maps that are conventionally understood as contained within each (supposedly separate) language system. In English, the cognate sensibilities embedded in Latinx refer to Spanish grammar and insinuate that the ostensibly discrete nature of Spanish and English is in fact more of a mix.
Latinx crosses the frontiers between languages in ways that are not always accessible in conventional translation.
What’s particularly interesting about Latinx is that the cross-lingual has become interlingual: The word inaugurates nuance in both registers. In English, it invites us to rethink the ways words maintain some of the gradations and underpinned meanings from the original tongue; in Spanish, it summons reflection on the utility and ethics of gendering nouns, articles, and adjectives — particularly those that refer to people.
Use of a linguistic structure from Spanish in English, and the use of a new suffix in Spanish, make Latinx remarkable in both languages. We are no longer discussing Spanish or English but where they meet — and how we respond to circumstances in which existent language structures fail to articulate value in appropriate ways.
Some argue against the notion that Spanish grammar should be transformed in these ways. “Like it or not,” write Gilbert Guerra and Gilbert Orbea of Swarthmore College, “Spanish is a gendered language. If you take the gender out of every word, you are no longer speaking Spanish … the result could be words like ‘hermanx’ [for siblings] and ‘niñx’ [children].”
But there are precedents for such sea changes — in fact, contemporary Spanishes are the result of one of them: When Classical Latin was interpreted by the diverse communities with which it came into contact, vulgar variants added definite articles, reduced or eliminated noun-declensions and cases (abandoning genitive and dative, modifying ablative and accusative). These reformations shaped how fundamental linguistic units like nouns and adjectives could be used. It is not unlike the ways x has grown into the linguistic vacuum created by a culture that values inclusivity over the ideologies embedded in a and o.
Situated in new circumstances, languages change radically.
The shift toward x in reference to people has already occurred in many communities. Both traditional and inclusive grammar appear in the humanities department at the University of Puerto Rico; for many faculty, hermanx and niñx and their equivalents have been the standard on syllabi, email, and formal and informal departmental memos, among other documents, for years. It is clear that the inclusive approach to nouns and adjectives is becoming more common, and while it may at some point become the prevailing tendency, presently there is no prescriptive control toward either syntax.
This situation has resulted in structures that appear unpronounceable in Spanish, which has been met with confusion and disregard from some. However, as Roy Pérez of Willamette University observes, “We learn to pronounce new things all the time.”
“Spanish is evolving to be more inclusive,” writes Yessina Funes, and it’s “more than a middle finger to the patriarchy.” It is a recognition of the exclusionary nature of our institutions, of the deficiencies in existent linguistic structures, and of language as an agent of social change.
Latinx has also been singled out as a Eurocentric reiteration of ideologies that obfuscate indigenous, African, and other non-European heritages. Kurly Tlapoyawa has inquired, “why [do] the promoters of the Latinx term feel the need to cling to a Eurocentric/anti-indigenous identity in the first place?”
Lissette Rolón, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Puerto Rico, has pointed out, “We do not have to agree on the strategy. But suffice it to recognize that the o does not name all of us.”
Indeed, at some point in human history there were no words. Now there are words. Someone invented them. This process continues.
Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera is an associate professor in the department of humanities at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. His books include After American Studies(Routledge, 2018), In Paris or Paname: Hemingway’s Expatriate Nationalism, and, as editor, Paris in American Literatures.
