Activities

The sections that follow invite you to apply the principles of gender-just pedagogies to the linguacultural contexts in which you work and live. Concrete possibilities (in French) are presented for analysis, discussion, and adaptation. Suggested resources for multiple languages and extension exercises for French are also provided. After each exercise, consult the corresponding debrief, which is designed to offer some guiding considerations (rather than a single set of correct answers, as a more cislingual answer key might).^[1]

2.1. Activity 1: Exploring Direct and Indirect Nonbinary Languaging.

As we explored in section 1 of this chapter, there are always multiple ways of doing gender and language together. Some of this variation can be connected to the people involved in doing language, some to the context in which the languaging is taking place, and some to our inherited patterns and memories of languaging. In this first exercise, let us consider why multiple strategies are particularly important for gender-just languaging and what this might mean for how we approach gender justice in our language classrooms, using a direct/indirect distinction as a tool for thought.

Examples of direct nonbinary languaging (adapted from Knisely, 2024a)

• If Kiki has a question, ki can send an email. [English. Uses the proper pronoun (Kosnick & Phipps, 2021) ki derived from Kiki’s name.]
• Mi amigue es escritore. [Spanish. My friend (-e ending) is a writer (-e ending).]
• Xier packt xiesen Koffer.[German. They pack/are packing their suitcase.]

Examples of indirect nonbinary languaging

• Students can send questions via email. [English. Pluralizing as opposed to If a student has a question, he/she/they/etc. can send an email.]
• Es una persona trabajadora. [Spanish. (You/They) are a hardworking person.]
• Die Lehrkräfte sind freundlich. [German. The teaching staff are friendly. Instead of Die Lehrerinnen/Die Lehrer [The teachers (die-class/das-class)].]

Using the example data set below (2.1.1), begin to familiarize yourself with direct nonbinary languaging (i.e., ways of languaging that make explicit reference to nonbinary people) and indirect nonbinary languaging strategies (i.e., pseudonormative ways of doing language that avoid gesturing toward a person’s gender). Consider the following questions, then consult the debrief in section 3.

1. Can you find at least two examples of indirect nonbinary languaging in the data? Of direct nonbinary languaging?
2. What do you notice about the forms that direct and indirect nonbinary languaging can take?
3. Why might there be multiple ways of enlanguaging gender?
4. Can you think of a reason as to why someone might choose indirect languaging strategies? Direct languaging strategies? What factors might influence someone’s choices among various direct and indirect ways of enlanguaging (or avoiding enlanguaging) gender

Consider, for example, the following factors:

1. Who is involved in languaging?
2. What are the relationships among the people doing language together?
3. In what context is the languaging occurring?
4. In what modality is the languaging occurring?

2.1.2 Exercise 1 Debrief, Extension, and Adaptation

2.1.2.1 Debrief: (1) Data points d, f, and h are examples of indirect nonbinary languaging because they do not use any forms or structures that diverge from cislingual varieties of French and simultaneously avoid gesturing toward anyone’s gender. All other data points include examples of direct nonbinary languaging because they involve ways of languaging that explicitly gesture toward nonbinary people and depart from cislingual French.

(2) The forms that languaging can take are always multiple and open to change (e.g., across time, contexts, individuals): (3) different people, informed by differing linguacultural logics, with differing memories of and relationships to various linguistic forms, structures, and varieties, with various interlocutors (real and imagined), in myriad settings, in and through multiple social positionings, enlanguage their various worlds and experiences in multiple modalities and in limitless ways.

(4) There are many reasons that someone might choose direct nonbinary languaging over indirect nonbinary languaging, such as:

1. Wanting to be known as nonbinary to those with whom one is languaging.
2. Wanting to mark one’s relationship to specific trans linguacultures.
3. Valuing representation via these enlanguagements.
4. Direct nonbinary languaging is a part of the practices of the community in which one is languaging.
5. To honor the linguistic self-determination of the people about whom one is languaging (wherein the referents have chosen direct nonbinary languaging for themselves).

There are equally numerous reasons that someone might choose indirect nonbinary languaging over direct languaging (or why someone might choose a specific direct strategy over others). Examples include:

1. Safety: Indirect nonbinary languaging or direct forms that can be willfully misheard (e.g., iel) or otherwise assumed to be a mistake in particular modalities may offer some protection that other direct languaging forms and strategies cannot.
2. Insider/outsider positionings and comprehension: Someone might opt for forms, structures, and strategies that rely on existing forms and structures and/or overlap with other linguistic movements, despite sometimes divergent aims (e.g., punctuated suffixation in nonbinary Frenches and l’écriture inclusive [inclusive writing]) because they render them easy to apply and understand, particularly by those who may not be part of trans linguacultures themselves.
3. Self-congruent self-expression: Someone may choose particular direct or indirect forms and strategies because they better enlanguage their gender than others. This includes people who engage indirect strategies because they do not want, are not able, or are not ready to self-position as nonbinary, be it due to internal self-exploration, the people with which one is languaging and one’s relationships to those people, and/or other aspects of the languaging context.
4. Respect and Safety: Not wanting to misgender someone and not being in a context where it is possible (or safe) to ask someone one-on-one about the forms and structures that should be used in reference to them. In such circumstances, indirect nonbinary languaging may be a temporary solution and a respectful way forward. Note that it is misgendering to know someone’s forms and structures, but regularly choose not to language in those ways (e.g., always using indirect nonbinary languaging when you know someone uses particular direct forms is misgendering).
5. Modality: Not all ways of doing gender and language together function across all modalities of language (e.g., punctuated suffixes or alternative symbols may be difficult or impossible to engage in an oral modality).

As these examples illustrate, choices among various languaging strategies and forms tend to involve a constellation of considerations about how our languaging honors and communicates who we are, conveys our worlds to others, and attends to the relationships and contexts in and through which that social act happens (consult Knisely, 2020; Knisely & Russell, 2024; LSA, 2021 for more).

2.1.2.2 Extension and Adaptation: For French, more extensive form-focused exercises (including an extended dataset without glosses and detailed debriefs) can be downloaded from krisknisely.com/ALLE. These may be adapted for use in French, applied linguistics, and teacher education courses alike, and they may serve as models for creating exercises that engage other languages and linguacultures.

For those working in languages other than French, an alternative data set may be compiled from existing resources (e.g., Knisely, 2023; Knisely & Russell, 2024; Papadopoulos, 2022) and used in place of section 2.1.1. Where curated data may not be readily available, student-educator collaboration to collect data following guidelines for ethical engagement with communities to which one does not belong is recommended (consult Knisely, 2022e, and krisknisely.com/ALLE for WebQuest directions and a starting list of principles).

2.2 Exercise 2: Data in a Gender-Just Language Pedagogies Framework.

Now, consider how you might introduce direct and indirect nonbinary languaging to your students in a way that aligns with the core principles of gender-just language pedagogies.

1. What data would you need to collect? Where might you find that data? How might students be involved?
2. What questions might you and the students ask of the data? What might you want students to notice?
3. What might those learning to language in the linguacultures you teach gain from engaging in data collection? In guided data analysis and discussion?
4. What might be important to keep in mind to align your approach with the principles of gender-just pedagogies? What might be some pitfalls to avoid in engaging in this type of exercise with students?

2.2.1 Exercise 2 Debrief, Extension, and Adaptation

2.2.1.1 Debrief: (1) The availability and accessibility of materials that engage trans linguacultures in gender-just ways will vary widely across contexts. You might consider the resources and guidelines in 2.1.2.3 as a point of departure. Recall that collaborative inquiry with students is a key component of applying TAQIBPs, as is engagement with real-world language data from multiple languaging communities, not just those that tend to occupy powerful social positions.

Where such data collection proves impracticable, it is possible to engage in open conversations about the gaps in understanding that persist when members of trans languaging communities are not represented among the ranks of language scholars or when contexts are hostile to the discussion and thriving of trans linguacultures due to overwhelming cisheteronormativity and other forces that ensmall such communities (Knisely & Russell, 2024; Knisely, 2023), while also recognizing the classroom as a distinct linguacultures that can be shaped by students. This means that it is possible to explore forms of indirect nonbinary languaging that may allow possibilities for harm mitigation, while also leveraging the types of linguistic creativity that are a part of trans linguacultures to imagine possibilities for direct nonbinary languaging that are practicable in specific contexts even if they may be unrecognized or even dangerous in others.

If we wish to move toward gender justice, we must not shy away from frank conversations about the way language attitudes often serve as more palatable covers for prejudice and discrimination while we also find ways to resist reifying these as the status quo in our classrooms (Knisely & Russell, 2024, p. 254).

As a part of this, we must respond to the types of resistance and distancing that we may witness among students and colleagues (Knisely, 2022b, 2024a; Knisely & Russell, 2024, pp. 244-256 for ideas about how to navigate highly restrictive environments and respond to resistance), including by upending false notions that equate trans linguacultural practices with linguacultural imperialism—notions that foreclose and obscure the global presence of people who do gender in ways that flout cisnormative expectations and in ways that cannot be neatly categorized into normative binaries, which may or may not neatly map onto Western notions of trans and nonbinary (Knisely & Russell, 2024, pp. 3, 27-29; Knisely, 2025a).

We must be in conversation with the realities of the linguacultures about which we teach and the forms of gender alterity that are present in these contexts, but we must simultaneously recognize our classrooms as a site that is more than a reification of or an entry point into these: Our classrooms are linguacultural sites in their own right, ones in which we must not reflexively reproduce harmful systems without resistance thereto.

(2) The possible answers to this question are particularly wide-ranging, but you might have considered questions such as: What forms and structures are a part of trans linguacultures in the language being studied? Which of these appear to be more or less common in the data? What affordances and constraints can we identify for the direct and indirect languaging strategies present in the data?

As you discuss these and other questions, you may want students to notice some of what we can learn when we develop trans-inflected multilingualisms (Knisely, 2024b), such as:

1. Language is a complex and adaptive system, always being changed to meet our ever-shifting social and relational needs.
2. Forms, structures, and ways of languaging are intentionally multiple because this allows for fluidity in how people do language and gender together, specifically, and in how we do our worlds in and through language more broadly.
3. There is never one right way of languaging.
4. Learning to language involves both metalinguistic awareness and skills in circumlocution or other forms of recasting.
5. Language is a social verb and languagers (people who do language) are agentive participants in languaging communities. Learners are languagers, and language learning is about agentive participation in languaging communities (Knisely & Russell, 2024).
6. Direct nonbinary languaging allows for the explicit enlanguagement of nonbinarity. That is, these ways of languaging allow for specific reference to nonbinary people and thus are a part of enlanguaged representation, even if some forms and structures are shared with other linguistic movements (including some that have been trans-exclusionary).
7. These ways of doing language might be new to some, but they exist in vibrant linguacultural communities, and they are widely legible to those who are invested in understanding them.
8. It takes practice to learn any ways of languaging that are new to you, but the more you engage with specific ways of doing language, the more you will be able to recognize the patterns that exist, and the more you will be able to take up these ways of doing language if and when you so choose.

(3) Students may gain:

1. Experience analyzing language data.
2. Experience with the variability of forms and structures that can be a part of nonbinary languaging.
3. When included as part of a broader gender-just approach, all of the motivational, interactional, linguistic, and metalinguistic advantages of engaging with trans knowledges and linguistic practices via gender-just pedagogies that were mentioned in the introduction to this chapter may be supported – to varying degrees – by engagement with exercises like those contained herein.

(4) Gender-just language pedagogies would encourage the incorporation of this and similar
exercises:

1. Alongside exercises that treat other forms of languaging and linguistic variation in similar ways, as part of de-sensationalizing queer and trans content. For example, students might be invited to analyze language data once per week to learn about nonbinary languaging alongside topics like translanguaging (e.g., Trentman, this volume), relationships between forms of technology and language (e.g., Hellmich & Vinall, this volume), relationships between race and languaging (e.g., Diao, this volume), regional variation, and variation based on any number of other social locations, among many possibilities.
2. As a way to lay bare normativities in language, not just those about gender (e.g., also questioning standard language ideologies, the native speaker fallacy, idealizing monolingualism in ways that restrict translanguaging, etc.).
3. As a way to bridge gaps in our own knowledges as instructors and invite students into linguistic exploration with and alongside us.

These are but three examples of what you might keep in mind as you work with the introductory information in this chapter to think about how you could engage with students in exercises like this one in a course guided by gender-just language pedagogies.

There are numerous possible pitfalls to avoid when engaging in this type of exercise with
students. Some pitfalls to guard against include:

1. Tokenizing and/or sensationalizing queer and trans content and people. This includes, but is not limited to, the queer and trans people in our classrooms and schools.
2. Point ‘a’ dovetails with making sure that this is not left to queer and trans people alone: working towards gender justice is a shared, collective responsibility. Some scholars may think of this through the lens of being an ally, accomplice, collaborator, or other such terms, each with their promises and pitfalls (consider Coda & Moore, 2023; Knisely, 2025a). Through any such framework and by any name, this requires all people to respectfully engage, while foregoing any urge to self-position as an expert in all things LGBTQ+. Recall the role of collaboration and co-construction in TAQIBPs.
3. Allowing queer and trans people to become a topic of debate. Queer and trans existence, rights, and happiness should never be debated.
4. Marginalizing queer and trans people and content that relates to queer and trans lives. This cannot be relegated to particular days or courses, and it should not be treated as an additional, optional (and therefore less valued) component. It must be a part of the core curriculum, including the day-to-day of activities and assessments and the stated language learning goals and outcomes.
5. Suggesting that this language data is (or could ever be) exhaustive and that any ways of languaging not present in the data do not exist. Recall that we are trying to invite students into a relationship with language where they understand themselves as participants in a collective with ever-evolving practices, and that trans linguacultures always foreground fluidity and flexibility.

These are but five key examples of pitfalls to guard against. As you think with the information in the introduction to this chapter, you will certainly identify other practices that merit careful and critical interrogation. This ongoing and iterative, critical reflection is a core aspect of gender-just pedagogies: we must always be engaged in restively problematizing the practices, products, and perspectives that we create and engage in as much as those that we encounter in our interactions with others. Consult Knisely & Paiz (2021) for additional questions to guide educators in ongoing self-reflection.

2.2.1.2 Extension:

As you continue to explore gender-just languaging and language pedagogies with and alongside your students, you will need to think through how you might design, select, and/or adapt additional exercises to practice languaging in these ways. Consider using the additional French-language exercises in the Activity Supplement (available at krisknisely.com/ALLE) as an example for critique and adaptation, including to other languages and linguacultures. For additional discussion of materials design, selection, and use (including activities for reflection and discussion) consult Knisely (2025b).