Ya know, Political Correctness is only silly if you don’t happen to fit into the category being labeled at the time.
Pulykamell summed it up nicely. I can’t see why some people just won’t go out of their way to avoid hurting someone’s
feelings.
Political correctness can be silly even when you do fit the category, in my opinion. Am I a nerd? Damn straight! By all means, call me a “person interested in obscure topics and devoid of social skills” if it makes you feel better, but don’t expect me to care one way or the other. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call it a duck instead of a diminutive waterfowl. I see no reason to forsake precision and conciseness in my speech when it’s possible that some overly sensitive person may perceive insult where none is intended.
Of course, if I know that someone finds a particular term offensive, I won’t use it around them unless I’d have to use such an awkward circumlocution as to render me utterly incomprehensbile. But as the problem lies with their reading more into a word than is intended and not with me, I’m not particularly bothered if I accidentally let it slip.
Language is indeed intended for communication; when I have to be imprecise and inelegant because someone gets their panties in a twist in hearing the word, say, short, I’m no longer communicating as effectively as I could. By all means, if it makes you happy, be as PC as you want, but leave me to continue to use the many wonderful adjectives in the English language to mean exactly what they are said to mean.
Well, I think this requires a degree of common sense on both sides. If I use the word “fag” to mean a cigarette - which is its primary meaning in my part of the world - and in a context which clearly indicates that it means “cigarette” and nothing else, I don’t think anybody, gay or straight, should leap up and down and complain that I’m offending gays. On the other hand, if I’m using it in a context in which it might be a disparaging reference to homosexuals but I actually mean “cigarette” (“Fags are evil, and they should be banned!”) I think I have a responsibility for the way in which that might be understood. Good manners requires me to avoid foreseeable, if unintended, insults to others.
And I don’t want to discredit your opinion; I just think that it isn’t completely honest. All words reveal two things: they describe objective (or what we like to think are objective) facts and events, and they describe our perception of them. ‘PC’ speech often tries to remove the second part; that isn’t polite, it is unemotional.
I don’t think this is the same thing as the attack on the use of “niggardly”, for instance, which is clearly a case of unintended consequences. More appropriate, I think, is the notion of using “gay” to describe something that is quintessentially or perhaps uncharacteristically not-normal. “Gay” is rarely used as just “not normal”; there is always a different undertone of scorn. Indeed, the sentence rarely has the same meaning if we were to replace “gay” with “not normal”. It is apparent here that the word carries several layers of meaning, reflecting the objective state (not normal) with other things (dependent on use, and the person using it, and the person hearing it, and so on).
Meaning is not passive by any stretch of the imagination; the speaker puts it out, and the listener puts it in, and it is the hope for clear expression that what the listener puts in is the same as the speaker puts out.
I have, in the past, used the word “gay” in such a manner. It never even occurred to me that the word, as such, had homosexual connotations (that is to say, a judgement on homosexuality) though it seems impossible that the use could have come from any other source (in common parlance). I never meant it.
I do not use the word any longer. But I think it is disingenius to say that I do so out of politeness; rather, I have simply grasped what the word means, found that it did not express what I meant to say when I used it, and found more appropriate expression.
I use language to express myself. If I want to be polite, I speak politely: there are words to use for politeness. If I want to be mean, I speak cruelly: there are words to use to express scorn. There is nothing more to language than that, IMO. Avoiding words because of your audience reveals that you have either not grasped the meaning of the word (gay), your audience has not grasped the meaning of the word (niggardly), or that you are being honest and speaking what you intend to speak.
pulykamell
I think this is what is wrong with ‘PC’ speech is that this is touted as its justification. Only someone in marketing ever caters their speech to their audience; the rest of us go about our daily lives saying what we mean, instead of trying to second-guess listeners and put together popular bromides without the hint of thought behind them. Speaking politely goes far beyond “calling people what they want to be called”, and if that is all PC speech is then it doesn’t even exist. No, I think PC speech is meant to be bland to the point of nonsense, much like a watered down version of Orwell’s Newspeak.
It is neither PC nor un-PC to use “negro” to describe blacks, or “black” to describe African Americans, nor “African American” to describe negros. You can see the strange chain of events that could lead any individual to use one term over the other in some attempt to “say the right thing” when instead they usually 9to my ear) end up sounding foolish. Because of the long history of racism against blacks in America, you will touch a nerve using any of those terms with some audience or another. IMO, “black” seems the least innocuous, far better than “colored” or “people of color” (which confuses my semantic functioning greatly!). But using “African American” also sends mixed (and largely incorrect) messages. To my ears, it feels as inappropriate as “Irish American” or “Italian American”: an attempt to recognize in speech with sterility a defining characteristic whose definition was historically a point of bias, racism, contention, or scorn. As such, it will always fail.
Polite speech is sterile, to-the-point, and as devoid of context as possible. It is the lowly worker speaking to the boss: respectful to the point of obviousness, and careful to never express anything to the point of (sometimes comedic) backpedalling. It has as much to do with PC speech as a healthy diet has to do with television: nothing at all. It is not a language or subset of language I would ever be happy to use.
Politeness is politeness, not ‘PC’; I do not feel in any sense that they are similar. ‘PC’ is a style of speaking where the speaker hopes to not trod on perceived misgivings; this is not the same as politeness, which is a sign of respect (albeit aloof respect). In attempting to sidestep misgivings, it sometimes seems to draw all the more attention to them.
To me, anyway.
One, if someone uses a word knowing that his/her listener/reader will recieve a certain meaning and/or implication that may not be its strict dictionary word, then such a meaning was meant. In the thread referenced the poster may initially have been ignorant of the common implication and association of the word, but after such was pointed out, continued use is with the intention of conveying such meaning to the listener/reader.
Two, most of us constantly revise our word choice depending on our audience. I’ll speak differently to my Mom than to a child than to a scientist than to a freind at a poker game. Differently in GD than in The Pit.
To do otherwise would be rude or pretentious (depending on the who and where).
If you think that it is overboard, that those with the concern are really an oversensitive minority view, then you think it is being “PC”, if you see the reason for the concern, then it is “politeness”.
This from today’s funnies (Agnes)
DSeid, I agree most of constantly adjust for our audience, that’s a large part of context. This is why I have a problem with ‘PC’: there simply is no audience to adjust to.
Who do I consult to determine what I should call black people? fat people? Handicapped? No one; unless, of course, you actually recognize a distinction in the first place, in which case ‘PC’ speech does what I accuse it of: draw attention to the difference it says shouldn’t exist.
“You shouldn’t say ‘fag’.” To whom? Says who? I see no useful distinciton made between accepted speech, polite speech, et cetera, and what is touted as ‘PC’.
What is ‘PC’ speech? That is the question. It cannot be politeness; polite speech is polite speech, and was around before ‘PC’ became a buzzword (of course, calling it a ‘buzzword’ shows my bias).
I look for a meaningful distinction, and I find none.
erislover, you speak as if PC is a nuetral term. “Polictical Correctness” is a purposfully derogatory phrase used to describe anything said or done that specifically considers anyone who is not of the majority. Of course you have a negative opinion of it, you’re supposed to. It’s like deciding to condemn hypocrisy. “PC” became a buzzword BECAUSE politeness expanded to include previously marginalized citizens. Some people didn’t like the extra consideration and made up a ridiculing term for it.
Now you see why I object to it being equated with “politeness”.