You’re probably right - I might be overthinking it, or approaching it wrong.
I guess the acid test is whether changing the terminology inspires us to try harder to make things better, or merely to congratulate ourselves on our sensitivity.
A lot of it is dishonesty. Words that are perfectly accurate and appropriately used are deemed offensive, bigoted, or whatever in order to control how folks speak and think about reality. Think about the disingenuous arguments made about the terms one is permitted to use over those who engage in thuggery.
The argument that the connotation of the word is the problem misses the genesis of the connotation of the word. That’s not accidental.
This viewpoint presupposes an entity that’s interested in controlling thought. The Ministry of Truth didn’t publish an edict one day, that “as of now, ‘illegal’ is taboo and replaced with ‘undocumented’”. The reality is probably more benign – it’s more likely that somebody published an Op-ed in the NY Times giving his opinion on usage and meaning, and other people saw it and said “never thought of it that way but he’s kind of right”, and it spreads.
See that’s the thing that’s actually quite interesting with loosely aligned groups and individuals acting in concert. You don’t have to have a strict hierarchy and organization like the US Army in order to understand that there is a common goal that can be advanced by acting according to a set of understood principles.
That sounds kind of like “consensus”, or “popular opinion”.
Perfectly accurate and appropriately used. As decided by whom? If the people the words effect have an issue with it, perhaps they are the ones to decide how accurate and appropriate the words are. To decide for someone else, without a care in the world about how it effects others, is arrogant and privileged.
Seems like that is a bi-directional concern. How some people choose to interpret a word in no way obligates others.
Would “invader” be accurate?
You can’t invade where you’ve been invited
It seems like you don’t know what bi-directional means.
But it inevitably affects how the language usage of those “others” will be perceived. If somebody persists in referring to a developmentally disabled person as a “retard”, for example, on the grounds that they’re legitimately using the word “retard” in its original clinical meaning and intending no insult by it, their usage will still come across as insulting.
My rule about the “euphemism treadmill” is the same as my rule for the evolution of slang in general: By the time that someone as un-hip and un-trendy as me becomes aware of what seems to be an emergent change in language, the change has most likely already happened, and the window for any kind of prescriptivist resistance to the change has pretty much closed.
There used to be absolutely nothing controversial about the terms “child prostitute” or “child prostitution.” But these terms imply that the children chose such a life, and that’s not accurate – they are typically victims of exploitation by adults. Now the preferred terms are “prostituted children” and “the commercial sexual exploitation of children.”
Wikipedia on “child prostitution”
Would anyone say the new terminology is motivated by “woke-ism”?
I came across an article called “The Story of a Lynching: An Exploration in Southern Psychology” in Haldeman-Julius Monthly published in 1927 where the author, Marcet Haldeman-Julius, defends the mental capabilities of John Carter, the lynching victim, by stating that he was a “moron not an imbecile.” It was a bit surprising because at the time I didn’t know moron, imbecile, and idiot were actual psychological classifications.
So, yeah, the euphemism treadmill is certainly a thing. Sometimes I think it’s silly, oftentimes won’t adopt the preferred nomenclature, but rarely do I get worked up or actively fight against it. If academics want to used enslaved people instead of slaves why be bothered by it?
So you’re saying they’re NOT breaking the law? They’re here illegally, and at least in legal terms, are aliens. So are people who just overstay their visas without any intention of moving here. Illegal immigrant is maybe a bit more accurate.
Undocumented immigrant sounds like they’re perfectly ok immigrants but they just left their immigration stuff in their other suitcase or something. Undocumented noncitizen doesn’t even address the immigration aspect- it implies that they have every right to be here, but just don’t have the appropriate papers.
That’s my point- there is a definite political agenda with these terms- in this specific case, it’s not some kind of touchy-feely stuff splitting hairs about “slave” vs “enslaved person”- it’s putting lipstick on the pig in that particular case by trying to emphasize the personhood of the person in slavery, and in the illegal immigrant case, it’s spinning their status a specific way.
The terms matter; reframing illegal aliens as “undocumented noncitizens” is definitely trying to change the Overton window on immigration, legal or otherwise.
This thread reminds of George Carlin’s bit on how PTSD was renamed over the years:
It always surprised me that while language does change, “Assault Weapons” is a term that’s still around despite literally not meaning anything. “Semi-automatic weapons” or “Assault Rifles” are terms that most people mean when they say it, and yet they persist. It’s the only term I’ve seen stuck around despite both serious sides agreeing it’s a bullshit word.
Huh, I think there are lots of bullshit words that have stuck around despite general consensus that they’re misnomers and/or misleading. “Tow the line” and “reign in” are just the first couple examples that leap to mind. I think lots of people just have a high tolerance for technically incorrect expressions.
How much did we actually lose when these terms became slurs and got discarded from polite use? I’m curious what a clinical psychologist would make of them and their definitions today. Would they, and the classifications they represent, still be useful? Better than today’s language and classifications?
I’m not any kind of psychologist, so I can’t answer in this specific case. I am skeptical that generally, in utilitarian terms, periodic shifts in language like homeless->unhoused or whatever represent a net loss in communication or understanding.
Honesty, the biggest harm of such shifts seems to be that they cause annoyance to people who don’t like change in general (or change in the name of social justice in particular), but the damage there seems pretty shallow and temporary.
Not much, obviously. Whatever terms psychology uses now are I’m sure fine and clinically descriptive enough. I don’t know what they are, but I bet in 30 years my grandchildren will be calling each other them.
I think we do lose something in the transition period in which a term is beginning to be unacceptable. How many people get tarnished as bigots because they’re using an out of date term, mostly unaware of the zeitgeist. How much effort do we waste as a society spinning our wheels on constantly updating language that just ends up kicking the can down the road. None of this rises to anything approaching a major societal problem, but the nature of a treadmill is that you don’t really get anywhere, so it’s at least worth considering how hard you run on it.
On another sort of related topic, it is interesting to me that, for example, “idiot” and “moron” are relatively tame as insults go, but more recent terms are considered worse. I’m not sure if that’s because we’re more culturally focused on language at the moment or because the power of an insult is somehow related to its “proper” usage, and we’re so far away from that time for those words.
Hard to quantify such a thing, but I’d say not more than we could easily afford, given the continued vitality and descriptive efficacy of language as we currently use it.
I’m especially not impressed by “anti-PC” arguments that it’s somehow just too hard to keep up with such linguistic changes. Considering how indefatigably “anti-PC” conservatives are always inventing and normalizing new idioms, such as “wokeness brigade” and “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and “libtard” and “snowflake” and “SJWs”, to mock and disparage people with whom they disagree, I have a hard time believing their whines that it’s just not faaaaaair to expect them to be able to remember to say “enslaved persons” instead of “slaves”, for example.