In order to illustrate the difficulty for foreign language teachers of understanding how to position themselves in relation to proposals to modify our languages (in particular Italian and French languages) to allow for so-called ‘gender inclusion’, I include this question more generally in the issue of variation in language teaching, using dictionaries and metalexicographic reflection as a key to critical reading. In the same way that reference works such as general dictionaries or foreign language textbooks now take account of the different uses of language and contexts of communication on the basis of an objective norm and no longer on the basis of the subjective/imaginary norm of ‘good usage’ (whether ratified by academies or promoted by groups or organisations more or less legitimised by the ‘language market’) which reproduces a monovarietal vision of language, the language teacher deals with linguistic heterogeneity using a communicative-actional approach which relocates usages according to the context of use and the intentions of the speakers. The inclusion of connotation labels and pragmatic information in some French dictionaries is evidence of a change in the vision of variation that could serve as a model both for the most widely used Italian dictionaries and for foreign language teaching.