FPÖ president pretends

Rosenkranz imposes gender ban in parliament

Walter Rosenkranz wants parliament to discuss content and not spelling.(Bild: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER)

What applies to authorities in Lower Austria under the black-blue coalition and to laws in Styria under the blue-black coalition is soon to become standard practice in the House of Representatives. As announced, FPÖ National Council President Walter Rosenkranz is imposing "new" rules for the use of language, using the "tried and tested" forms.  

"Ladies and Gentlemen" is the form of address that Austria's parliament will use again in future to invite visitors - and not "visitors" - to the open day on the occasion of the national holiday. And from now on, this form of address will also be used in the House as a general greeting and invitation. Just as the provincial governments in Lower Austria and Styria have done, a gender ban will now also be imposed in Parliament, i.e. the use of the internal I, colon, "Sternderl" and slash will be dispensed with in future when using the German language.

President sets the tone
"As a state institution, we have to adhere to the rules set out by the German Spelling Council, the only institution recognized by the state. And Parliament has also given itself a legal basis in the 2021 Women's Promotion Plan. I want people to simply stick to it and not invent their own language. Because real equality comes from education, fair opportunities and respect - not from punctuation marks," FPÖ National Council President Walter Rosenkranz explained to the "Krone" newspaper.

Parliament is a place of democracy, not of language policy experiments. We are returning to a language that corresponds to the spirit of the Austrian constitution: generally understandable, factual and inclusive in the best sense of the word.

FPÖ-Nationalratspräsident Walter Rosenkranz

Focus on the essentials
After all, parliament should be arguing about content and not about spellings that make the language incomprehensible and bumpy. "It is not without reason that the German Bundestag and the Swiss National Council, as well as almost all print media, do not use gender language," says the second-highest man in the Republic in terms of protocol. With the new guidelines, the focus is now back on the essentials. But what does this mean in concrete terms for the House? 

As the "Krone" learned, the parliamentary directorate was informed at the end of the week that in future a guideline with only two forms is to be used in linguistic practice at work. Either the neutral form, whereby care is to be taken to ensure that there are no stylistic flourishes in terms of content and that, for example, "dead cyclists" is written in accident statistics. Or - preferred by Rosenkranz - the couple form, whereby the motto female before male, i.e. ladies and gentlemen, or citizens, applies.

For reasons of capacity and the associated costs, this linguistic guideline should in any case apply to all future parliamentary documents. 

Adjustments to texts planned
"For texts that have already been drafted, the rewording is to take place on an ongoing basis in the course of current adjustments or edits (e.g. reprints, etc.)," the House said in response to an inquiry from Krone. Of course, the guidelines do not apply to speeches in the National Council or texts by individual parliamentary groups - here the free mandate of the MPs applies.