Pascal Gygax, the weight of words

Published on November 7, 2024 at 09:22. / Modified on November 7, 2024 at 09:27.

Fun to meet a psycholinguist who demonstrated the influence of androcentric terms on our perception of reality at the alma mater of Fribourg, precisely on the Regina Mundi site. To explain this name, Pascal Gygax takes us on a tour of the deconsecrated premises of this old church. Stained glass windows occupy the walls, and the enormous Christ on the cross is hidden behind a huge curtain, “open or closed depending on the sensitivities of the people who work in the room,” he explains, half stunned, half amused. His offbeat humor is reminiscent of the biophysicist Jacques Dubochet, who wrote in his CV that he was born in 1942 “to optimistic parents”.

With this elder, Pascal Gygax shares the beard and glasses of the stereotypical researcher’s panoply. But not yet the Nobel Prize, even if he is on the right track: to crown his twenty years of research on the influence of language on our vision of the world, Pascal Gygax will be awarded the Marcel Benoist Prize this Thursday at the Federal Palace, considered the equivalent of the Nobel in Switzerland. He facetiously recalls the announcement of his distinction by Federal Councilor Guy Parmelin: “It’s funny and teasing, because his party is trying to ban in Switzerland what I’m working on: inclusive writing, or what they believe they are, because there is a great lack of understanding of the subject.”

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