Politically correct speech, a common goal

[seabeyond]

What is political correctness? Where does it come from? Why does it exist? Why should we even try and use it? These questions and more spring into the minds of many people who think about political correctness. Political correctness has, in these not quite so enlightened days, become almost a rude word. It was created and it does exist for a reason. What are these reasons, read on and all will become clear. First of all, what is politically correctness? Political Correctness is a term coined to cover the concept of the practical exercising of egalitarianism by individuals. It covers such concepts as using non-derogatory language and giving Equal Opportunities to those with equal abilities. This is not actually that hard a thing to do. All it requires is to not use offensive and blatantly derogatory statements. Like the word 'Nigger' used to refer to people of African origin in the United States. Another example is using gender specific languages in places where referring to both sexes of the species. What political correctness is not. It is not defining a double standard. If a African person uses the word 'nigger' they are just as much in the wrong as a European. A women can still be sexist. Just because they happen to be one of the people being marginalised does not mean that they don't uphold and even enforce the attitudes themselves. Political correctness does not stop debate about cultures and the merits and problems with any given culture. It is just a means of not insulting someone with language. Insulting people is after all a more passive form of violence, but it can still hurt.

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Racism, Sexism, homophobia and all the other forms of discrimination are by definition a form of brain washing. People are not born believing them, they are imbued with these values from the society in which they grow up. Political Correctness is involved with developing a way of thinking that will negate some of these. Since language plays an important part in shaping our thoughts, actions and shared values, then if we acknowledging that any given person could be female or one of any other minority, we change peoples thoughts on where people belong in the system. Career jobs still mostly have gender specific titles like postman, policeman, and chairman, by changing these words in our speech and thoughts to be postie, police officer and chair we by default change our image of these people. Colour is also an important point, in our current society black is thought of as bad and white is thought of as pure and angelic. These are all cultral perceptions in China for instance white is the colour of death, all these attributions of colour to certain arbitrary feelings does lead to a change in our behaviour.

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As more people start using politically correct language it will become more and more accepted as the way of doing things. It will become the correct way to speak. It will mean that sexism and racism will begin to loose their stranglehold position in today's society. There are many ways around using sexist language in speech and text. Simple replacements of man with person work in most cases. Use of gender inspecific pronouns like it and they work in a lot of other cases. Politically correct language does not reduce your vocabulary or in any way inhibit your freedom of speech. Let me expand on that. Freedom of speech is a qualified statement, it should never be thought of that you can say anything you want and get away with it. The current system is you are free to say anything, it's just that people are free to bring liable, defamation or assault charges against you.

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Many people use the argument that he is actually a generic and it means both genders. This can be easily shown to be wrong. If he was a true generic, then why have the word she at all? For if he is a generic and refers to both members, then she is not needed. Therefor he does not refer to both sexes. It must therefor refer to the male members of the species. Political Correctness is not about describing the world so as not to give offence. Political Correctness is about not using words based on a personal bias of them, that has nothing to do with the person you are talking to, but to do with your cultural perception of them. For example it is Politically Correct to say "You didn't do an acceptable job", it is not politically correct to say "You goddamn boong did a shithouse job, but what do you expect from a wommon?" The concept of Ultimate good is often mentioned and that there exists concepts which they considered to have a higher value than Political Correctness. Usually it is in reference to freedom of speech and democratic values. Political Correctness does create a freer society, one where people are not discriminated against based on gender or race. This allows anyone to get the same chances and opportunities as anyone else. Since democracy is about being ruled by the people, a system where more of the people feel they have a say in the running of the system is more democratic. This means Political Correctness is consistent with the popular idea of Democracy therefor Political Correctness is Democratic.

http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/newsltrs/vol4iss1/politically.html

[BlueToTheBone]

1. I have many books where I

added s/ to all "he"s.