It's Not the Language, It's Us: Recommendations on What Language Can Do and on What We as Writers Can Do

Language is always already embedded in contexts. These contexts impact the ways that language is taken up, produced, and received. As such, making meaning out of language is a collaborative endeavor among producers, receivers, and bystanders. Here we draw on the literature to demonstrate what people believe about language and what language is. We review past attempts to create inclusivity in (written) language practices as well as discuss efforts by publishing houses to guide language use in publications. We end by offering a set of recommendations that we hope will be useful for a longer duration than simply changing lexicon.