I’m curious, did Maher explain how people were being forced to stop using words? Which government agency puts words on the prohibited list? What are the penalties for using a prohibited word? Do you get fined? Is imprisonment a possibility?
Maybe Bill Maher needs to stop being such a snowflake.
Or when we’re told told not to call people “retards” or “n*****s” or “fags” “spics” or many other objectionable terms. How dare they?!
No one is banning Negroni. This is a ridiculous thread.
Negroni being an actual family name(*), I find it pretty implausible that there would be any traction to have it “cancelled” over some obliviot believing the first five letters in it are some sort of trigger.
(* and its Spanish cognate, Negrón.)
It’s my term, although I believe it closely reflects the spirit of the conversation with McWhorter, and although he didn’t use the term “Orwellian”, Maher did make a reference to Orwell’s 1984. I think your statement that “‘Orwellian’ refers to the dystopia of 1984, where the government outlawed certain uses of language”, somewhat misses the relevant point here. The concern in this context is not about the kind of authoritarianism that enforces language change, it’s the fact – recognized by Orwell – that language change encouraged or motivated by any influential entity can be used as a way of controlling societal mores and perceptions.
This is why we have to be careful about those pushing for these kinds of changes. They may be well-intentioned and beneficial, or well-intentioned but just stupid and annoying, or self-serving promotions of ideology. A big example of the latter is the term “pro-life”, which certainly has a far warmer ring to it than “intransigent anti-abortionist”. After all, if you’re not “pro-life”, what are you? A death cultist?
You and I have had many arguments about language. I’m happy to acknowledge that language will always change through common everyday usage and that there’s not much we could do about it even if we wanted to. But I will always be very suspicious of top-down language change mandates passed down from on high by some organized vested interest.
It generally comes about through social pressure – through wanting to be seen as enlightened or, dare I say it, woke. Modern and progressive, not old and regressive. Ultimately it’s not much different than the reason that teenagers use their contemporary slang.
I think that as long as you don’t pull that “What do you think about that Negro…ni?” bullshit you’ll be fine.
BTW, adding “What?? I have no idea what you’re talking about. You sure are oversensitive!” is just icing on the shitcake.
I feel this is ignoring a crucial distinction. If some central authority is changing language then the result may be a change in social mores.
But in the absence of such a central authority, language changes do not produce changes in social mores; they are the product of changes in social mores.
And the reason this is a crucial distinction is because in the absence of any official capacity to enforce some law against using a word, the only thing that can stop people from using a word is public opinion. In other words, people decide what people should do.
You can still use any offensive words you want - but the consequence of doing so will be that people who hear you will think you’re an asshole. And that’s not force.
Like I said, Bill Maher should stop being such a snowflake.
Seriously. Is that his whole shtick nowadays?
I think that’s simplistic and deceptive. The reality is that it works both ways. Changes in societal mores, values, and attitudes can induce natural organic changes in language, true. But there are clearly vested interests trying to drive those changes for their own reasons, for good or ill. As in the example of the term “pro-life”. Or how it turned out (unsurprisingly) that in the early days of the ACA the general sentiment about Obama’s proposed “public option” turned sour after nothing more than the right re-labeling it as “the government option”.
No. Some may still see him as smug and arrogant, but I think the years have made him more relaxed and thoughtful. Or maybe it’s all the pot, who knows! 
I remember a news story of a black family wanted to sue a Mexican restaurant for writing “Negro” on one of their take -Outs containers, not understanding that it was on a container of black beans. I’m trying to find it but every Google News result just gives me Black Bean recipies.
You can all say whatever words you want. You aren’t victims, no matter how much you want to be.
Let us know when you find this “news” story.
Same here, I wondered what someone had managed to get offended about this time. This is a bit disappointing.
Oh my gosh. It is hard to imagine a more profound misreading of 1984 than to suggest that violent authoritarianism is tangential to its point.
1984 wasn’t about subtle propaganda, or social movements, or public debates about language. It was about torturing and killing dissidents. Using “Orwellian” to refer to linguistic trends you don’t like is a discredit to the power of the novel.
As for the OP, it’s profoundly silly, and that’s really all there is to say about it.
I read a story on Reddit a while back, about a restaurant that used a system of colored stickers on take-out boxes to denote contents. Blue sticker = chicken, red sticker = pork, black sticker = steak. One day, they ran out of stickers, so the kitchen crew just started writing the color on the boxes with a Sharpie. Problem was, they were Spanish speakers, and they were writing the words on the boxes in Spanish. And a Black couple ordered the steak dish.
This was just a Reddit post, not a news story, and there wasn’t any mention of a lawsuit.
It sounds too pat. Plus if they were going to write on the boxes, wouldn’t they just write Chicken, Pork, or Steak? (in Spanish)
Wouldn’t you be able to tell from the taste, the colour and the texture of the meat after a bite or two whether it was pork, chicken or beef? Well, if you can’t, some people could.
Yeah, but people get pissy if you serve them food with a bite taken out of it.
You’ve misunderstood my point and are unfortunately misrepresenting it. I’m quite familiar with the novel and its important and disturbing message. But control of language was one of many tools that Big Brother used to control the masses, along with constant monitoring, rewriting history, and ruthless suppression of dissent. I’m just simply referencing that fact about language – that it’s not only a reflection of our thoughts and attitudes, but can be used to shape them.
For that reason the term “Orwellian” is sometimes used as a criticism of any entity that engages in top-down language engineering for political ends, in which I include the practice of putting deceptive labels on things – like anti-abortionists labeling themselves as “pro-life”, insurrectionists labeling themselves as “patriots”, or an act of Congress that strips away civil rights being labeled “the Patriot Act”.
I have no argument with calling such usage hyperbolic, but inasmuch as such language engineering is often fraught with peril, it’s hyperbole in a good cause.
Probably true.
Nope.
Yup.
This is very much so.
What the people complaining about what they call “woke” “banning” of words are complaining about isn’t the specific words. It’s the changes in social mores.
Of course they’re going to focus on fringe cases. It’s much easier to make fun of fringe cases. But what they’re complaining about is that they want, themselves, to be able to say whatever they feel like; and they don’t want other people to say what those “other” people feel like about what they are saying.
Why wouldn’t they just write “chicken”, “pork”, or “steak” on the boxes? Using a sticker code saves writing; but if you’re going to have to write things on the boxes anyway, what advantage is there to using code words?
The third one maybe – but what on earth is “top-down” about what a group of people choose to call themselves?
I think you seem to be trying to jam every use of language into “top-down”, whether it belongs there or not.
Okay, guys, it’s a story I read on Reddit, not a restaurant organization plan that I personally designed. They didn’t write “steak” on the box because then the punchline doesn’t work.