Political correctness
Political correctness is the avoidance of speech that could be construed as insensitive to a certain demographic, including the changing of established language because of real or perceived connotations. The term in its current sense became common in the early 1990s.[1]
The movement towards politically correct language can be traced back to the academic New Left in the United States and its focus on language and the humanities as a means of social change after the decline of "Old Left" organisations in the 1970s. [citation needed] The lever of broad-based social struggle was therefore abandoned in favor of idealist means of social change like sociolinguistics and critical theory combined with the social analysis of identity politics. [citation needed] This synthesis of identity politics with language is approaching hegemonic status within the liberal bourgeoisies of several developed nations, such as the finance, business, advertising, and technology sectors, and has been transposed into languages like Spanish[2][3] and German.[4][5]
History
Origins
Theory
Political correctness is fundamentally a linguistic ideology whose objective is to enact social change through the correction and monitoring of other people's speech. The idea is theoretically rooted in the objectives of the modern field of sociolinguistics, which came into its own in the 1960s, as well as concepts like microaggressions and marginalization drawn from identity politics. Although sociolinguistics itself is a descriptive field based on scientific principles, the discipline has moved away from these objectives in favor of an overt and idealist program of social change through language regulation. In 2010, respected sociolinguist William Labov, widely hailed as having founded the discipline with his landmark scientific work, felt it necessary to remind his colleagues of the bleak reality that lay behind the richness of Black American dialect variation:
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is not an endangered language variety; on the contrary, it is continuing to develop, as all languages, and to diverge from other varieties. The primary correlates of such divergence are residential segregation and poverty, which are part of a developing transgenerational cycle that includes also crime, shorter life spans, and low educational achievement. The most immediate challenge is creating more effective educational programs on a larger scale. In confronting residential segregation, we must be aware that its reduction will lead to greater contact between speakers of AAVE and speakers of other dialects.... If the mixed populations of our Philadelphia schools should actually be integrated, we may even reach a time when young Black children use elements of the White vernacular, and take part in the radical sound changes that sweep over the White community. At that point, AAVE as a whole might be in danger of losing its own distinct and characteristic forms of speech. I am sure that many of us would regret the decline of the eloquent syntactic and semantic options [for linguistic self-expression] that I have presented here. But we might also reflect at that time that the loss of a dialect is a lesser evil than the current condition of endangered people.[6]
Even basic sociolinguistic questions such as regional variation have been neglected[7][8] in favor of a continuous struggle to effect social change through linguistic prescriptions. The most visible fruits of five decades' labor flourish in media discourses like "linguistic appropriation",[9][10][11][12] "linguistic imperialism",[13][14] and others.
Adoption
"Corporate speak"
Carefully manipulated language is a hallmark of corporate publications. In order to appeal to as broad a marketable audience as possible, companies have to choose words in a way that minimises the risk of putting anyone off. Virtue signalling, or the association of a group or brand with a certain cause in order to improve their public image, is another obvious goal. Obvious examples of virtue signalling occurred in the United States during the 2020 George Floyd movement.
Debate
Leftists
Support
Liberals, usually rightists, allege that Marxists and anarchists are responsible for the spread of political correctness. Prominent reactionaries such as Jordan Peterson, himself infamously ignorant of Marxist theory, only contribute to this conflation. In fact, by far the largest proponents of politically correct language are corporations, political institutions, and liberal academics.
Leaving aside this conflation, many leftists do join in supporting the use of politically correct language. It can be argued that simple changes in vocabulary can meaningfully reduce the day-to-day marginalisation of oppressed demographics, such non-white and LGBT people, which is seen to be a worthwhile goal. [citation needed]
Criticism
Critics argue that politically correct language is a veneer which hides real oppression or makes it palatable to the liberal establishment. An extreme example is the spread of the term enslaved person to replace "slave": the use of such a self-distinction is effective in pressuring other institutions to adopt the change, creating a linguistic wave which possesses the illusion of systemic change when in fact such changes have no clear bearing on the historiography or pedagogy of slavery.[a]
Liberals
Anti-PC liberals
As a right-wing talking point
The conflation of far-left politics with politically correct language is a common tactic the right wing uses to delegitimize them both.
Right-wing political correctness
Far-right
Despite their seeming opposition to political correctness, the alt-right uses a lot of it. This is especially true in the words they use to identify themselves. "Scientific racist" becomes "race realist," and "white supremacist" becomes “white nationalist” or “identitarian,” “online neo-Nazis” becomes “alternative right.” People know what the former is. They don't like it. As such, new language has to be found.
This effect can be enhanced by being more pedantic about the meaning of words than the average person. "Fascists" are members of the Italian Fascist Party, being a "neo-reactionary" is something entirely different. A "Nazi" is a member of the German National Socialist Workers' Party during the Weimar period. In this way they will try to avoid any epithet that's applied to them.
In order to seem more respectable, far-right propagandists are happy to go along with the euphemistic language of the day. For instance, instead of using their favourite racist pejorative, or simply saying "non-whites", they will likely go for the euphemism "people of colour." [citation needed]
Right- and left-liberals
Right-wing rhetoric has become refined since the Cold War era, and used to be derided by liberal and progressive journalists; in the 2020s, however, left-liberals have come to adapt right-wing rhetoric for their uses, especially concerning Western foreign policy. Examples of right-wing political correctness include:
- The use of euphemisms when discussing foreign wars: "intervention"; "Saudi-led coalition"; "moderate rebels"; "War on Terror"
- Legitimation, and de-legitimation, of foreign states: "democratic governments"; "Axis of Evil"; "rogue state"; "rules-based order"
- Euphemisms for torture: "enhanced interrogation techniques"; "sleep management" (sleep deprivation); "special renditions" (kidnapping) [15]
- Biased language to refer to contested issues: "war of Russian aggression"; "disinformation"; "conspiracy theory"
- Virtue-signalling language: "Freedom fries" and "Freedom toast" during the 2003 Iraq War;[16] "Kyiv" for Kiev, and "Kyiv mule" instead of "Moscow mule"[17]
Notes
- ↑ One rationale for the use of enslaved person appears to be to emphasize the agency of the victim. But it is difficult to imagine what agency is enjoyed by an enslaved person (apologies to Stalin).
References
- ↑ Richard Bernstein (OCT. 28, 1990), "IDEAS & TRENDS; The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct", The New York Times
- ↑ La x, la @, la -e. ("The 'x', the '@', the '-e'".) Fundación del Español Urgente (in Spanish).
- ↑ Decir “negro” no es racismo. ("Saying 'Black' [negro] is not racism"), El País (in Spanish).
- ↑ Sternchen, Gender-Gap oder Binnen-I: Wie gendert mensch richtig? ("Asterisk, gender gap or internal 'I': What is the right way to gender?"), Der Standard (in German).
- ↑ From Fräulein to the gender star: Germany's language revolution., thelocal.de.
- ↑ William Labov, Unendangered Dialect, Endangered People: The Case of African American Vernacular English, 2010. Linked through William Labov's public page at the University of Pennsylvania website. Quotes are taken from the Abstract and from pp. 24-5.
- ↑ Jones, Taylor (2020). Variation in African American English: The Great Migration and regional differentiation (PDF) (PhD thesis). Retrieved 19 November 2023. Summarized by the author here.
- ↑ Folk Perception of African American English Regional Variation. Even the work cited only mentions this fact offhand before proceeding to analyze "perceptions" of this variation rather than to further study it.
- ↑ Producing white comfort through “corporate cool”: Linguistic appropriation, social media, and @BrandsSayingBae, International Journal of the Sociology of Language.
- ↑ ‘First things first, I'm the realest’: Linguistic appropriation, white privilege, and the hip-hop persona of Iggy Azalea, University of Groningen.
- ↑ Appropriation vs. Authenticity: The Use of Black Vernacular English by White Speakers, Tamara Petrov, Suffolk University.
- ↑ 'Stay woke': Language crossing or linguistic appropriation?
- ↑ Linguistic Imperialism, The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching.
- ↑ The Cambridge Handbook of Sociolinguistics, Part IV, Chapter 19: Colonization, globalization, and the sociolinguistics of World Englishes, by Edgar W. Schneider.
- ↑ A glossary of US military torture euphemisms, Jon Henley, The Guardian.
- ↑ http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/11/sprj.irq.fries/
- ↑ Bar owners are swapping out Moscow Mules for Kyiv Mules, Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN, March 4, 2022.