Political correctness

Political correctness (also politically correct, or "PC") is a term used in English-speaking countries to describe real or perceived attempts to impose limits on the acceptable language and terms used in public discussion. While it usually refers to a linguistic phenomenon, it is sometimes extended to cover political ideology or public behavior.

Criticisms of political language choice

Critics of political language choice argue that it amounts to censorship and is a danger to free speech. Some argue that limits placed on language and the boundaries of public debate will inevitably lead to limits on conduct. Some conservatives would also view many "politically correct" terms as linguistic cover for an evasion of personal responsibility, for instance when "juvenile delinquents" become "children at risk".

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Some on the political left reject the conservative definition of the term when applied as a blanket political epithet to all liberals and leftists, but do hold that there is indeed a political correctness which has become a problem on the left. They argue that the emphasis on the left has shifted in recent years away from traditional left concerns of social class, socialism, labor unions, ecology, ending discrimination, and related issues, and has instead turned toward such things as postmodernism, post-structuralism, multiculturalism, academic theories of structural or institutionalised oppression such as white privilege and heterosexism, all of which are seen as either antithetical to the traditional left emphasis on the working class, divisive, exclusionary toward the white working class, or incomprehensible to most of the general public outside of academia.

Related Topics:
Social class - Socialism - Labor unions - Ecology - Discrimination - Postmodernism - Post-structuralism - White privilege - Heterosexism - Working class

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Orwell

Politically motivated changing of terminology, where, for example blind becomes visually impaired, has been compared to Newspeak, a bowdlerised form of English predicted by George Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which eliminates any words that might conceivably have meanings against the state. Some critics allege that this kind of terminology represents an Orwellian attempt to make "bad" or "incorrect" thought difficult and achieve a form of mind control (see doublespeak and thoughtcrime). "Political correctness" has been compared with Orwellian ideas such as communist and fascist propaganda. However, Orwell's vision is of a language reduced to very few words, while most examples of politically selective language are much longer than the words being replaced.

Related Topics:
Newspeak - Bowdler - George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwellian - Mind control - Doublespeak - Thoughtcrime - Communist - Fascist

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In his essay Politics and the English Language, though, Orwell described actual trends in the use of language that follow the pattern of using long and scientific-sounding words and phrases to hide or dull meaning. In a well-known example, he "translated" a passage from Ecclesiastes to "modern English", turning "I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all" into "Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

Related Topics:
Politics and the English Language - Ecclesiastes

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