From the Utah Statesmen Online

OUR VIEW: Drop the PC and say what you mean

 

11/9/2007

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As journalists, we at The Statesman like to believe we have at least some command over the English language. Commas, hyphens and semicolons – wait, scratch the last one – are all favorites, but of all the elements of the language, we’re most partial to words.

Words. What are they anyway? At a casual glance they are a bunch of letters and syllables combined to convey a symbol or message of some sort. Inherently there is nothing wrong with words themselves.

Not according to the Politically Correct Police. Oops, we messed that up too. It should read Politically Correct Law Enforcement Officers. Politically correct speech has filtered into practically every facet of society, making it difficult to know exactly which words to use in any given situation for fear of offending someone or something.

Though the exact origin of political correctness is unknown, one of the early uses of the word was in communist countries, derived from Marxist vocabulary. Wait a second. Politically correct speech is a byproduct of communism? Wow, that sounds very un-American to us. Strangely enough, this idea was adopted in American culture and has infiltrated everyday speech.

Political correctness stems from the idea that words are more than a collection of well-structured letters. Words have meanings attached to them and these meanings change throughout time. What one word may mean to one person may mean something entirely different to another, causing offense. So, to avoid offending others, a substitute word – called a euphemism – is put in place and tagged with the very official-sounding title of politically correct. Of the nearly one million words in the English language – most of us knowing only a small fraction of these – many have been blacklisted (oops, that’s probably not PC either) and replaced with PC phrases.

Some great ones include:

poor – monetarily challenged.

meter maid – parking enforcement adjudicator

garbage man – sanitation engineer

 

housewife – domestic engineer

man hole – maintenance hole

This shortlist is vastly exceeded by the “(fill in the blank) challenged” phrases like visually challenged (blind), gravitationally challenged (fat), aesthetically challenged (ugly) or even morally challenged (a criminal). With this line of thinking, with a failed assignment, we could consider ourselves academically challenged, or when challenged for cheating, we can consider ourselves creatively challenged. Hey, maybe these can count as disabilities as well and we can all apply for a scholarship.

Seriously, who decides what’s politically correct and the words that are strictly taboo? Some backwoods redneck in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Western Kentucky (Notice the two PC violations there)? And why is it politically correct anyway? Most people aren’t involved in politics at all, as the voting records show. Shouldn’t this phrase be socially correct then? Wait, did we just find a more politically correct way to say politically correct?

Let’s face it, words are words. And while we’d all like to think the phrase ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me,’ is true, words can and sometimes do hurt. Racism, hate crimes and bigotry of all sorts are not acceptable. There is no place for calling people names and branding them as such-and-such.

At the same time, there is no need to prohibit the use of words that are perfectly acceptable. Ugly is OK to say. So is drunk. So is woman. So is man.

It’s time we use the English language as it was designed to be used and drop the pious attitude toward acceptable and unacceptable words.

 

From The Daily Mail

 

11/10/2007

Language police? They’re just so gay

In the cafe I overheard two teachers discussing one of their pupils.

“He’s a bit slow,” said one.

“You can’t say that,” said the other.

“Nowadays we have to say ‘general developmental delay’.”

They laughed and glanced over to a table full of blokes who were swearing loudly about parking tickets.

So what can and can’t you say these days? Sometimes I wish I’d invented a public swear box. I’d be richer than Bill Gates.

Everyone swears now. Not just when they are upset or in private but in public. Some are masterful at it. My favourite TV shows, from The Sopranos to Have I Got News For You, are full of bad words.

It wouldn’t occur to me to phone to complain as I might miss a gem.

As swearing becomes normal, words about race and sexuality are the new taboos but, confusingly, it’s always about who uses them and in what context.

Rappers can call themselves niggers but I can’t. Jonathan Ross can introduce his band Four Poofs And APiano and a Big Brother contestant can describe himself as a Paki Poof because he is diffusing the stereotypes. The fact he was clearly an emotional wreck is neither here nor there.

But when a woman on Big Brother called a heterosexual man a poof, 200 people rang in to complain. Still, the world seems united in being able to slag off chavs.

We have even invented what I consider to be useless new words to further compound the situation, such as Islamophobia or Islamofascism, which close down rather than further any debate.

ALL these words, offensive or not, hover in some parallel world that has little to do with how people communicate on the streets, at football-matches, in the workplace. David Cameron, “a toff”, is to be congratulated for deracialising the immigration debate because he speaks the code.

But the policy he is proposing is not itself, deracialised is it?

Many controversialists, such as Jeremy Clarkson or the sad Jim Davidson, must be grateful for political correctness.

Without it they would not have careers. Nor would Ricky Gervais, who knowingly walks the same tightrope.

But political correctness has always been misrepresented as a form of censorship rather than a bid to redress some of the balance in favour of people not in charge of the status quo.

Those who are zealous about politically correct terms and those who oppose them fall into the same trap of seeing language as a fixed, controllable entity. It isn’t.

Slang changes with each fantastically creative generation. When gay people could proudly proclaim themselves gay, kids started to refer to homework or anything a bit naff as gay. Is that in itself homophobic?

Only if this were reflected in actual attitudes to gays.

No wonder public bodies that exist to monitor inappropriate language are at sea. Racist behaviour was tolerated by the producers of Big Brother, racist language wasn’t.

The level of caution this produces means a widening gap between the way people express themselves and the official dead language.

Nothing could be deader than hearing the Queen read out Brown’s jargon about aspiration. What does the Queen know about aspiration? She is the bloomin’ Queen!

I don’t expect public figures to talk ‘street’, but tiptoeing around the minefield of race, class and sexuality means that often they seem to be talking only to each other.

We police language at a ridiculous level as we can’t yet police anti-social behaviour properly. Of course there is a link between the two but surely the balance is the wrong way round.

We must be free to say what we like even if we cannot do as we like.

Our language is alive and in rude health. Too rude for some maybe.

But give me rude health over the comatose discourse of the new puritans any day, who, in their effort to offend no one, end up signifying nothing.

 

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