I’m starting to hear news stories about people living on the streets that refer to them as “unhoused”, rather than the more common “homeless”. I know that terminology and vocabulary changes, often to be more sensitive – but I’m missing the distinction here.
Another change that I’ve noted, but I think I understand: “slaves” is out; “enslaved persons” is in. Identifying people on the basis of a condition is dehumanizing – so let’s call them “people + condition”, instead of “condition”.
I have seen houseless vs homeless used locally. The distinction being, you can have a home in a tent. Or a car. Or under a bridge.
Over time, descriptive terms, especially those describing some kind of situation or condition of disadvamtage seem to have a tendency to become slurs, and get replaced by terms that don’t have that connotation.
It doesn’t have to be anything inherent in the terminology itself, just the way it is used.
The paradigm shift from “slaves” to “enslaved people” is, for me, a powerful one. “Slaves” now sounds inadequate; “enslaved people” conveys the sense of a long-term atrocity being inflicted on innocent human beings.
I don’t care for either of them, sounds like academia took an extra dose of wokeness.
And this is a never-ending process called the “euphemism treadmill”.
One of the clearest examples of this process is the terms used to refer to people of lower than average intelligence. Words like “imbecile”, “moron”, “cretin”, and “idiot” were all originally clinical terms to refer to various impairments, but are now general-purpose insults. In my lifetime, we went from terms like “retarded” and “special education” being standard non-offensive terms to various levels of offensiveness.
We search for new terms because the old ones become commonly-used insults, but the process never stops, because saying that someone is not as capable, mentally, as others is a very effective insult, and people start using the new terms as they are introduced.
Yep. And I think its almost inevitable that it will continue like that.
And its not the same as political correctness, its just the effect of the reality that innocent terminology tends toward insult, because a lot of humans are a little bit awful, incrementally
It’s how they’re used.
Calling someone a “retard” does two things: it applies a medical term where no diagnosis has been made. And it implies a certain “badness” at the same time. Thereby insulting not only the person you are hurling the epithet at, but also any to whom the medical term actually applies.
Retardation, or idiocy, or slavery or homelessness should not be a defining character of a person, and it should certainly not be an insult.
I don’t know… the whole way of describing people who have come to the US without going through the legal INS process is fraught with PC nonsense and touchy-feely crap.
I mean, changing “Illegal alien” to “Undocumented noncitizen” or “Undocumented immigrant” is absolutely politically motivated, and serves to lessen the impact of the fact that they are in a continual state of not abiding by the laws of the land during their tenure in the US. I mean, I’m sympathetic to their plight, but it’s not a question of documentation as if they just forgot to fill out the right form or address the letter correctly- it’s a question of whether they followed the correct procedures and are abiding by our laws.
While the term “undocumented immigrant” may have originated with an agenda in mind, it is more accurate than “illegal alien”. In almost all of the cases no legal determination of their immigrant status has been made. It’s you, not a court of law, who has made this determination. Who are you to say who is illegal and who is not?
I thought “unhoused” and “unsheltered” were subcategories of “homeless”. If someone is couch surfing they are housed, but still homeless. If someone is sleeping at a shelter they are sheltered, but still homeless. So unhoused/unsheltered would be the subset of homeless people who are literally sleeping on the street.
That said, I have noticed a switch from “homeless person” to “person experiencing homelessness” on my local public radio station. I assume the latter is meant to emphasize that homelessness is just a temporary situation the person is going through, not some innate quality of the person.
I get the reasons for the changes in terminology re: homeless, but I can’t help wondering if the new terms may make the situation seem less dire. Sleeping in an abandoned car, as one of my students did until we finally found him, seems less dire if you call it houseless or unhorsed, it seems to me.
This is another example. I like the notion of not implying this is an innate quality, but in many cases, it’s also not a temporary condition.
I’m saying there are two phenomena that somewhat resemble one another; one of them is when terms change because of some measure of political correctness - the other is the discarding of a term that was once (more or less) innocently descriptive, but became an outright slur. Terms relating to race and disability are particularly prone to this.
Also, "illegal’ is pejorative: you’re a lawbreaker and oughta be in jail. “Undocumented” is less so – “oops, I seem to have misplaced my papers”.
There’s actually a new term for undocumented immigrants that I’ve seen NPR and other places use which confused me at first. I forgot what it was but it was weird sounding.
Noncitizens
I never thought of this, nor noticed a new usage (though I have notice “slave” falling out of favor in computer terminology regarding master-slave device relationships), but now that you mention it, you’re right: “slave” does sound more dehumanizing to me than “enslaved person.” It’s a subtle difference, but to me it’s a real one.
What you call “wokeness,” decent human beings call compassion.
I can’t help wondering if changing ‘slave’ to ‘enslaved person’ could be a little bit counterproductive.
Yes, ‘slave’ is absolutely dehumanising, in part, because slavery itself is dehumanising. I feel like the horrible condition needs a horrible term to properly describe it - to keep us shocked enough to want to do something about it.
In my opinion, with my mind, I don’t think so. But I can understand other ways of thinking about it. To me, the term “slave” has a more “just a piece of property” feel to it, rather than the horrific reality. “Slave” itself feels like a euphemism to me. Once again, that’s me and how my brain feels about the word and its connotation, not just denotation.