The future is conjugated, too

Words have always fascinated me. Perhaps because they seem small, yet can carry so much weight.

A sentence can stay with us for years. For better or for worse.

It can reassure, build confidence or make someone feel they belong. It can also confine, label or reduce a person to something they may never have chosen to be.

In 2025, I found an article whose title was precisely The power and pain of words. It examined how the language used with patients after an adverse medical experience can help repair harm or, conversely, make it worse. ^[1]

Another clinical trial from the same year, conducted in hospital spiritual care, found lower depression symptom scores after consultations with professionals trained in compassion. The authors associated part of that effect with more inclusive language that was more focused on the other person. ^[2]

Words are not medicines. But they are not harmless either.

Their influence also goes beyond how they make us feel. Research on linguistic relativity has spent decades asking how far the language we use participates in the way we perceive and organise reality. A theoretical article published in 2025 proposes understanding language, environment and cognition as closely intertwined processes. ^[3]

That is where inclusive language becomes especially interesting to me. Less as a question of formal correctness than as a much more basic question.

Who comes to mind when we use a word?

A scientific review published in 2025 brings together decades of research showing that certain masculine forms used as generics produce biased mental representations, while more inclusive forms can reduce part of that effect. The studies it brings together show that changing how we name people changes who becomes more mentally visible. ^[4]

That makes me think about something I care about deeply. Some inherited ideas survive not only because someone continues to defend them. Sometimes they survive because they remain hidden in our expressions, examples, jokes or in the people we automatically imagine when someone says “a scientist”, “a leader” or “a family”.

Repeating a word does not mean sharing everything it has historically carried. But I do not think we can pretend that language leaves no mark either.

I am convinced that we have some responsibility for the words we choose. Not because changing vocabulary will magically change the world.

But because words take part in our beliefs. Beliefs influence expectations and decisions. And decisions, repeated over years, can end up changing the course of a life.

I do not know whether science can measure something as large as destiny. But I find it increasingly hard to believe that how we name the path leading towards it makes no difference.

Perhaps the future begins there too. In the words we choose to keep conjugating.