Origins of a Right Wing Term of Scorn “Politically Correct”
Comments by Lucy Warner, August 7, 2015


I first heard of the term “Politically Correct” in the 1990s when it became widely popular. It was being used mainly by right wing pundits, though the ever entertaining Bill Maher also uses it. He makes a practice of being politically “incorrect,” and I love to listen to him. He is essentially liberal, though his political party choice is independent. He has no political affiliation, but does slam Republicans more often than liberals.

When my sister picked up the phrase, I told her that it was biased and was being used to counteract liberals who were speaking of racial, sexual, gender and economic issues and advocacy. She said that wasn’t true and continued using it. I forgive her because the term is very descriptive, clever, and pungent and as a result is hard to resist as an arguing point. I personally do not say it because it usually is used to criticize what I would call simply “polite” or “liberal”. Probably because the word “liberal” has come under such a fierce attack by “conservatives,” good and politically conscious Democrats are now using “progressive” which has a specific meaning according to www.bing.com, “Economic progressivism (not to be confused with the more general Idea of Progress in relation to economic growth) is a political philosophy incorporating the socioeconomic principles of social democrats and political progressives. These views are often rooted in the concept of social justice, and have the goal of improving the human condition through government-based economic central planning.”

Political correctness is used by the Rightists to make fun of those who fight for equality and justice for all – in other words what I was taught from my childhood as being the unquestioned ideal of America. The American “melting pot” was considered to be a good idea in those days. Different cultures can learn from one another and become better as a result. Of course right alongside that meaning, many people were using the N word freely and criticizing “welfare queens” in very heated discussions. I firmly believe that we need to hang onto the old basic politeness and liberalism even if we don’t get a belly laugh with our comments at cocktail parties, so that the hate speech industry will no longer be able to keep the very real class warfare within our society ablaze. The original definition of the term had a strictly political meaning, in the Russian Soviet days, “following the party line.” Unfortunately we are in a new era of rightwing politics across most of the world now. Good old Wikipedia has an excellent exploration of the term “politically correct”, which I am presenting below. It’s very educational. After that is another Wikipedia article called “People-first Language.” Though it takes a conscious effort to speak that way, especially at first, it produces a calmer and gentler result with most people, or at any rate is supposed to do that. The “Criticism” section in People-first below is very interesting, especially the comments from advocates for the blind, deaf and autistic. “You can’t win for losin’,” apparently.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

Political correctness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Political correctness (adjectivally, politically correct, commonly abbreviated to PC) is a pejorative[1][2][3][4][5] term used to criticize language, actions, or policies seen as being excessively calculated to not offend or disadvantage any particular group of people in society. The term had only scattered usage prior to the 1990s, usually as an ironic self-description, but entered mainstream usage in the United States when conservative author Dinesh D'Souza used it to condemn what he saw as left-wing efforts to advance multiculturalism through language, affirmative action, opposition to hate speech, and changes to the content of school and university curriculums.[6] The term came to be commonly used in the United Kingdom around the same period, especially in periodicals such as the Daily Mail, a conservative tabloid that became known for the trope "political correctness gone mad."

Scholars on the political left have said that conservatives and right-wing libertarians such as D'Souza pushed the term in order to divert attention from more substantive matters of discrimination and as part of a broader culture war against liberalism.[7][8] They have also said that conservatives have their own forms of political correctness, which is generally ignored.[9][10][11]

History of the term[edit]

The term politically correct did not occur much in the language and culture of the U.S. until the latter part of the 20th century, and its earlier occurrences were in contexts that did not communicate the social disapproval inherent to the contemporary terms political correctness and politically correct. In the 18th century, the term "Politically Correct" appeared in U.S. law, in a political-lawsuit judged and decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1793.[12][13] The first recorded use of the term in the typical modern sense is stated in William Safire's Safire's Political Dictionary to be by Toni Cade in the 1970 anthology The Black Woman, where she wrote "A man cannot be politically correct and a chauvinist too".[14]

Early-to-mid 20th century[edit]

In the early-to-mid 20th century, contemporary uses of the phrase "Politically Correct" were associated with the dogmatic application of Stalinist doctrine, debated between formal Communists (members of the Communist Party) and Socialists. The phrase was a colloquialism referring to the Communist party line, which provided for "correct" positions on many matters of politics. According to American educator Herbert Kohl, writing about debates in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s,


The term "politically correct" was used disparagingly, to refer to someone whose loyalty to the CP line overrode compassion, and led to bad politics. It was used by Socialists against Communists, and was meant to separate out Socialists who believed in egalitarian moral ideas from dogmatic Communists who would advocate and defend party positions regardless of their moral substance.

—"Uncommon Differences", The Lion and the Unicorn Journal[1]

1970s[edit]

The French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote: "a political thought can be politically correct ("politiquement correcte") only if it is scientifically painstaking" in the Quinzaine littéraire.[15] In the 1970s, the New Left began using the term political correctness shortly after.[2] For example, in the essay The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970), Toni Cade Bambara said that "a man cannot be politically correct and a [male] chauvinist, too." In the event, the New Left then applied the term as self-critical satire, about which Debra Shultz said that "throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the New Left, feminists, and progressives... used their term politically correct ironically, as a guard against their own orthodoxy in social change efforts".[2][3][16] As such, PC is a popular usage in the comic book Merton of the Movement, by Bobby London, which then was followed by the term ideologically sound, in the comic strips of Bart Dickon.[2][17] In her essay "Toward a feminist Revolution" (1992) Ellen Willis said: "In the early eighties, when feminists used the term political correctness, it was used to refer sarcastically to the anti-pornography movement's efforts to define a "feminist sexuality"".[4]

Stuart Hall suggests one way in which the original use of the term may have developed into the modern one:


According to one version, political correctness actually began as an in-joke on the left: radical students on American campuses acting out an ironic replay of the Bad Old Days BS (Before the Sixties) when every revolutionary groupuscule had a party line about everything. They would address some glaring examples of sexist or racist behaviour by their fellow students in imitation of the tone of voice of the Red Guards or Cultural Revolution Commissar: 'Not very "politically correct", Comrade!'[18]

1990s[edit]

In 1990, the term was adopted by the right, with its media use as a pejorative phrase becoming widespread in 1991.[5] It became a key term encapsulating conservative concerns about the left in academia in particular, and in culture and political debate more broadly. Two articles on the topic in late 1990 in Forbes and Newsweek both used the term "thought police" in their headlines, exemplifying the tone of the new usage, but it was Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (1991) which "captured the press's imagination".[5] "Political correctness" here was a label for a range of policies in academia around supporting multiculturalism through affirmative action, sanctions against anti-minority hate speech, and revising curricula (sometimes referred to as "canon busting").[5][19] These trends were at least in part a response to the rise of identity politics, with movements such as feminism, gay rights movements and ethnic minority movements. That response received funding from conservative foundations and think tanks such as the John M. Olin Foundation, which funded D'Souza's book.[20]

In the event, the previously obscure term became common-currency in the lexicon of the conservative social and political challenges against progressive teaching methods and curriculum changes in the secondary schools and universities (public and private) of the U.S.[21] Hence, in 1991, at a commencement ceremony for a graduating class of the University of Michigan, the then U.S. President George H.W. Bush spoke out against: "... a movement [that would] declare certain topics 'off-limits', certain expressions 'off-limits', even certain gestures 'off-limits'..."[22]

Herbert Kohl (1992) pointed out that a number of neoconservatives who promoted the use of the term "politically correct" in the early 1990s were actually former Communist Party members, and, as a result, familiar with the original use of the phrase. He argued that in doing so, they intended "to insinuate that egalitarian democratic ideas are actually authoritarian, orthodox and Communist-influenced, when they oppose the right of people to be racist, sexist, and homophobic."[1]

Mainstream usages of the term politically correct, and its derivatives – "political correctness" and "PC" – began in the 1990s, when right-wing politicians adopted the phrase as a pejorative descriptor of their ideologic enemies – especially in context of the Culture Wars about language and the content of public-school curricula. Generally, any policy, behavior, and speech code that the speaker or the writer regards as the imposition of a liberal orthodoxy about people and things, can be described and criticized as "politically correct".[citation needed] Jan Narveson has written that "that phrase was born to live between scare-quotes: it suggests that the operative considerations in the area so called are merely political, steamrolling the genuine reasons of principle for which we ought to be acting..."[23]

Liberal commentators have argued that the conservatives and reactionaries who used the term did so in effort to divert political discussion away from the substantive matters of resolving societal discrimination – such as racial, social class, gender, and legal inequality – against people whom the right-wing do not consider part of the social mainstream.[7]

In the course of the 1990s, the term was increasingly commonly used in the United Kingdom, with the expression "political correctness gone mad" becoming a catchphrase, usually associated with the politically conservative Daily Mail tabloid.[24] In 2001 Will Hutton wrote:


Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid–1980s, as part of its demolition of American liberalism.... What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism – by levelling the charge of "political correctness" against its exponents – they could discredit the whole political project.

—"Words Really are Important, Mr Blunkett", The Observer[8]

Similarly Polly Toynbee, writing in 2001, said "the phrase is an empty, right-wing smear, designed only to elevate its user",[25] and, in 2010 "...the phrase "political correctness" was born as a coded cover for all who still want to say Paki, spastic, or queer..."[26][27]

History of the phenomenon[edit]

Main articles: Gender-neutral language and People-first language

Whilst the label "politically correct" has its particular origins and history, it only partially overlaps with the history of the phenomenon to which the label is now applied. While the use of "politically correct" in the modern sense is a label dating to the early 1990s, the phenomenon so labelled developed from the 1960s onwards. This phenomenon was driven by a combination of the linguistic turn in academia and the rise of identity politics both inside and outside it. These led to attempts to change social reality by changing language, with attempts at making language more culturally inclusive and gender-neutral. This meant introducing new terms that sought to leave behind discriminatory baggage attached to older ones, and conversely to try to make older ones taboo, sometimes through labelling them "hate speech". These attempts (associated with the political left) led to a backlash from the right, partly against the attempts to change language, and partly against the underlying identity politics itself.

In the American Speech journal article "Cultural Sensitivity and Political Correctness: The Linguistic Problem of Naming" (1996), Edna Andrews said that the usage of culturally inclusive and gender-neutral language is based upon the concept that "language represents thought, and may even control thought".[28] Andrews' proposition is conceptually derived from the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis, which proposes that the grammatical categories of a language shape the ideas, thoughts, and actions of the speaker. Moreover, Andrews said that politically moderate conceptions of the language–thought relationship suffice to support the "reasonable deduction ... [of] cultural change via linguistic change" reported in the Sex Roles journal article "Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Attitudes Toward Sexist/Nonsexist Language" (2000), by Janet B. Parks and Mary Ann Robinson.

Moreover, other cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics works, such as the articles "Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction between Language and Memory" (1974) in the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, and "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice" (1981) in the journal Science indicated that a person's word-choice has significant framing effects upon the perceptions, memories, and attitudes of the speaker and of the listener.[29][30]

Practical application[edit]

In a practical sense, political correctness involves choosing language which the user believes will not offend people of different races, genders, physical abilities, ethnic group, sexual orientation, religious belief, and ideological worldview, among other things. The speaker attempts to use language perceived to be non-pejorative.

Opponents of such language apply the terms politically correct, political correctness, and PC as pejorative objections to what they see as over-sensitivity at the expense of common sense and practicality. Conversely, opponents of political correctness then employed the term politically incorrect to show that they choose to ignore the constraints of politically correct speech. Examples include the television talk-show program Politically Incorrect (1993–2002) and the culturally conservative book series of The Politically Incorrect Guide to a given subject, such as the U.S. Constitution, capitalism, and the Bible.[31]

Exclusions[edit]

Exclusion of certain groups[edit]

In the Civitas think tank pamphlet, The Retreat of Reason: Political Correctness and the Corruption of Public Debate in Modern Britain (2006), the British politician Anthony Browne said that "the most overt racism, sexism and homophobia in Britain is now among the weakest groups, in ethnic minority communities, because their views are rarely challenged, as challenging them equates to oppressing them."[32][33] Inayat Bunglawala, media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that the opinions of Anthony Browne were misleading and ludicrous about the societal realities of the peoples who are contemporary Britain.[32]

Right-wing political correctness[edit]

"Political correctness" is a label normally used for left-wing terms and actions, but not for equivalent attempts to mould language and behaviour on the right. However the term "right-wing political correctness" is sometimes applied by commentators drawing parallels; one author used the term "conservative correctness", arguing in 1995 (in relation to higher education) that "critics of political correctness show a curious blindness when it comes to examples of conservative correctness. Most often, the case is entirely ignored or censorship of the Left is justified as a positive virtue. ... A balanced perspective was lost, and everyone missed the fact that people on all sides were sometimes censored."[9]

One example is the Dixie Chicks political controversy, where a U.S. country music group criticized U.S. President George W. Bush for launching a pre-emptive war against Iraq in 2003;[34] the remarks were labelled "treasonous" by some rightwing commentators (including Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly).[10] The newspaper columnist Don Williams said that such criticism is the price for speaking freely about one's disapproval of the Iraq War, and that "the ugliest form of political correctness occurs whenever there's a war on. Then you'd better watch what you say".[10]

Paul Krugman in 2012 wrote that “the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which – unlike the liberal version – has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order”.[11]

Examples of politically correct right-wing language included the U.S. Congress voting to rename its cafeteria's French fries “Freedom fries”.[35] In 2004, then Australian Labor leader Mark Latham described conservative calls for “civility” in politics as “The New Political Correctness”.[36]

Identity politics[edit]

The post-structuralist philosopher Julia Kristeva was one of the early proponents of promoting feminism and multiculturalism through analysis of language, arguing (in the word of the New York Times, 2001) "that it was not enough simply to dissect the structure of language in order to find its hidden meaning. Language should also be viewed through the prisms of history and of individual psychic and sexual experiences. ... this approach in turn enabled specific social groups to trace the source of their oppression to the very language they used." However in 2001 Kristeva said that these views had been simplified and caricatured by many in the United States, and that (in the words of the Times) "political assertion of sexual, ethnic and religious identities eventually erodes democracy."[37]

Some radical right-wing groups argue that the true purpose of "political correctness" and multiculturalism is to undermine Judeo-Christian western values, referred to as "Cultural Marxism" by theory proponents. This usage originates from a 1992 essay in a Lyndon LaRouche movement journal. See Frankfurt School conspiracy theory.

Examples include Patrick Buchanan, writing in the book The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Culture and Civilization (2001) that "Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism, a régime to punish dissent, and to stigmatize social heresy, as the Inquisition punished religious heresy. Its trademark is intolerance."[38] Similarly, University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Charles Kors and lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate connect political correctness to philosopher Herbert Marcuse. They claim that liberal ideas of free speech are repressive, arguing that such "Marcusean logic" is the base of speech codes, which are seen by some as censorship, in US universities. Kors and Silvergate later established the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which campaigns against PC speech codes.[39]

Other[edit]

A conservative criticism of higher education in the United States is that the political views of the faculty are much more liberal than the general population, and that this situation contributes to an atmosphere of political correctness.[40]

False accusations[edit]

See also: Loony left

In the United States, left forces of "political correctness" have been blamed for actions largely carried out by right-wing groups, with Time citing campaigns against violence on network television as contributing to a "mainstream culture [which] has become cautious, sanitized, scared of its own shadow" because of "the watchful eye of the p.c. police", even though protests and advertiser boycotts targeting TV shows are generally organized by right-wing religious groups campaigning against violence, sex, and depictions of homosexuality on television.[41]

In the United Kingdom, some newspapers reported that a school had altered the nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep" to read "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep".[42] But it is also reported that a better description is that the Parents and Children Together (PACT) nursery had the children "turn the song into an action rhyme.... They sing happy, sad, bouncing, hopping, pink, blue, black and white sheep etc."[43] That nursery rhyme story was circulated and later extended to suggest that like language bans applied to the terms "black coffee" and "blackboard".[44] The Private Eye magazine reported that similar stories, had been published in the British press since The Sun first ran them in 1986.[45] See also Baa Baa White Sheep.

Science[edit]

See also: Politicization of science

Among scientists, the correctness of procedure, result, and consequent scientific data derives from the factual truth of the matter, and from the soundness of the reasoning by which it can be deduced from observations, first principles, and quantifiable results. When the publication, teaching, and public funding of science is decided by peer committees, academic standards, and either an elected or an appointed board, the conservative allegation can arise that the acceptability of a scientific work was assessed politically. As such, in What is Political Correctness (1999), the physicist Jonathan I. Katz applies the term PC as censure, characterized by emotional discourse rather than by rational discourse.[46]

Conservative and reactionary groups who oppose certain generally accepted scientific views about evolution, second-hand tobacco smoke, AIDS, global warming, and other politically contentious scientific matters, said that PC liberal orthodoxy of academia is the reason why their perspectives of those matters fail to receive a fair public hearing; thus, in Lamarck's Signature: How Retrogenes are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm (1999), Prof. Edward J. Steele said:


We now stand on the threshold of what could be an exciting new era of genetic research.... However, the 'politically correct' thought agendas of the neo–Darwinists of the 1990s are ideologically opposed to the idea of 'Lamarckian Feedback', just as the Church was opposed to the idea of evolution based on natural selection in the 1850s![47]

In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science (2005), Tom Bethell said that mainstream science is dominated by politically correct thinking. He argues that many scientists are motivated more by passionate emotion than by dispassionate reason.[48]

In the book The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America (1995), opponents of the racially determined I.Q. theory proposed in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994) argued against the proposition that genetic determinism explains the IQ score differences between black people and white people, and gave the socio-economic inequality in the US as the reason. Supporters of the book said that criticism of their perspective (IQ differences based on genetics) is unfair, because it is based upon the political correctness derived from a liberal worldview.[49]

Satirical use[edit]

Political correctness is often satirized, for example in the Politically Correct Manifesto (1992), by Saul Jerushalmy and Rens Zbignieuw X,[50] and Politically Correct Bedtime Stories (1994), by James Finn Garner, presenting fairy tales re-written from an exaggerated politically correct perspective. In 1994, the comedy film PCU took a look at political correctness on a college campus.

Other examples include the television program Politically Incorrect, George Carlin’s "Euphemisms" routine, and The Politically Correct Scrapbook.[51] The popularity of the South Park cartoon program led to the creation of the term South Park Republican by Andrew Sullivan, and later the book South Park Conservatives by Brian C. Anderson.[52]

Replying to the "Freedom Fries" matter, wits suggested that the Fama-French model used in corporate finance be renamed the "Fama-Freedom" model.[53]

British comedian Stewart Lee satirised the oft-used phrase "it's political correctness gone mad". Lee criticised people for overusing this expression without understanding the concept of political correctness (including many people's confusion of it with Health and Safety laws). He, in particular, criticised Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn for his overzealous use of the phrase.[54]

Use as a pejorative[edit]

In modern usage, the terms PC, politically correct, and political correctness are generally pejorative descriptors, whereas the term politically incorrect is used by opponents of PC as an implicitly positive self-description.[55][56]

See also[edit]


Portal icon Language portal
Portal icon Politics portal

Anti-racism in mathematics teaching
Christmas controversy
Frankfurt School Conspiracy Theory
Gutmensch (German expression for "do-gooder")
Kotobagari (Japanese political correctness)
Logocracy
Newspeak
Pensée unique
People-first language
Politics and the English Language (1946 essay by George Orwell)
Red-baiting
Reverse discrimination
Sprachregelung
Wedge issue
Xenocentrism

References[edit]

1.^ Jump up to: a b c "Project MUSE - Uncommon Differences: On Political Correctness, Core Curriculum and Democracy in Education". jhu.edu.
2.^ Jump up to: a b c d Ruth Perry, (1992), "A Short History of the Term 'Politically Correct'", in Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding, by Patricia Aufderheide, 1992
3.^ Jump up to: a b Schultz, Debra L. (1993). "To Reclaim a Legacy of Diversity: Analyzing the 'Political Correctness' Debates in Higher Education" (PDF). New York: National Council for Research on Women.
4.^ Jump up to: a b Ellen Willis, "Toward a Feminist Revolution", in No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (1992) Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 0-8195-5250-X, p. 19.
5.^ Jump up to: a b c d Whitney, D. Charles and Wartella, Ellen (1992). "Media Coverage of the "Political Correctness" Debate". Journal of Communication 42 (2). doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1992.tb00780.x.
6.Jump up ^ D'Souza, Dinesh (1992). Illiberal Education: Political Correctness and the College Experience. John m Ashbrook Center for Public. ISBN 978-1-878802-08-8.
7.^ Jump up to: a b Messer–Davidow 1993, 1994; Schultz 1993; Lauter 1995; Scatamburlo 1998; and Glassner 1999.
8.^ Jump up to: a b Will Hutton, “Words really are important, Mr Blunkett” The Observer, Sunday 16 December 2001 – Accessed February 6, 2007.
9.^ Jump up to: a b "Conservative Correctness" chapter, in Wilson, John. 1995. The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on High Education. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. p. 57
10.^ Jump up to: a b c "Don Williams Insights – Dixie Chicks Were Right". Retrieved November 9, 2007.
11.^ Jump up to: a b Krugman, Paul (26 May 2012). "The New Political Correctness". New York Times. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
12.Jump up ^ In the 18th century, usage of the term "Politically Correct" occurs in the case of Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), wherein the term meant "in line with prevailing political thought or policy". In that legal case, the term correct was applied literally, with no reference to socially offensive language; thus the comments of Associate Justice James Wilson, of the U.S. Supreme Court: "The states, rather than the People, for whose sakes the States exist, are frequently the objects which attract and arrest our principal attention... Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? 'The United States', instead of the 'People of the United States', is the toast given. This is not politically correct." Chisholm v State of GA, 2 US 419 (1793) Findlaw.com – Accessed 6 February 2007.
13.Jump up ^ Flower, Newmas (2006). The Journals of Arnold Bennett. READ BOOKS,. ISBN 978-1-4067-1047-2."Politically correct". Phrases.org.uk. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
14.Jump up ^ William Safire, Safire's Political Dictionary, 2008 rvd. edn.,, p.556, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195343344, 9780195343342, google books
15.Jump up ^ Foucault, Michel (March 1968). "Foucault répond à Sartre". La Quinzaine littéraire (46). Retrieved 15 January 2015.
16.Jump up ^ Schultz citing Perry (1992) p.16
17.Jump up ^ Joel Bleifuss (February 2007). "A Politically Correct Lexicon". In These Times.
18.Jump up ^ Hall, Stuart (1994). "Some 'Politically Incorrect' Pathways Through PC" (PDf). S. Dunant (ed.) The War of the Words: The Political Correctness Debate. pp. 164–184.
19.Jump up ^ In The New York Times newspaper article "The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct", the reporter Richard Bernstein said that:

The term "politically correct", with its suggestion of Stalinist orthodoxy, is spoken more with irony and disapproval than with reverence. But, across the country the term "P.C.", as it is commonly abbreviated, is being heard more and more in debates over what should be taught at the universities.

—The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct, NYT (28 October 1990) Bernstein, Richard (28 October 1990). "IDEAS & TRENDS; The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct – The New York Times". Retrieved 22 May 2010.
Bernstein also reported about a meeting of the Western Humanities Conference in Berkeley, California, on the subject of "Political Correctness" and Cultural Studies that examined "what effect the pressure to conform to currently fashionable ideas is having on scholarship". Western Humanities Conference
20.Jump up ^ Wilson, John. 1995. The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on High Education. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. p26
21.Jump up ^ D'Souza 1991; Berman 1992; Schultz 1993; Messer Davidow 1993, 1994; Scatamburlo 1998




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language

People-first language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

People-first language is a type of linguistic prescription in English, aiming to avoid perceived and subconscious dehumanization when discussing people with disabilities, as such forming an aspect of disability etiquette. People-first language can also be applied to any group that is defined by a condition rather than as a people; for example, people who live on the street rather than homeless or people who ride bicycles rather than bicyclists.

The basic idea is to impose a sentence structure that names the person first and the condition second, for example "people with disabilities" rather than "disabled people" or "disabled", in order to emphasize that "they are people first". Because English syntax normally places adjectives before nouns, it becomes necessary to insert relative clauses, replacing, e.g., "asthmatic person" with "a person who has asthma." Furthermore, the use of to be is deprecated in favor of using to have.

The speaker is thus expected to internalize the idea of a disability as a secondary attribute, not a characteristic of a person's identity. Critics of this rationale point out that separating the "person" from the "trait" implies that the trait is inherently bad or "less than", and thus dehumanizes people with disabilities.

The term people-first language first appears in 1988 as recommended by advocacy groups in the United States.[1] The usage has been widely adopted by speech-language pathologists and researchers, with 'person who stutters' (PWS) replacing 'stutterer'.[2]

Rationale[edit]

Main articles: Linguistic prescriptivism and Language and thought

The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is the basis for ideologically motivated linguistic prescriptivism. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis states that language use significantly shapes perceptions of the world and forms ideological preconceptions.

In the case of people-first language, preconceptions judged to be negative allegedly arise from placing the name of the condition before the term "person" or "people". Proponents of people-first language argue that this places an undue focus on the condition which distracts from the humanity of the members of the community of people with the condition.

Usage guidelines[edit]

Many organizations publish disability etiquette guides that prescribe people-first language[3][4] The For Dummies guide to etiquette (2007) also prescribes people-first language.[5]

Adherence to the rules of people-first language has become a requirement in at least one academic journal.[6]

Criticism[edit]

Critics have objected that people-first language is awkward, repetitive and makes for tiresome writing and reading. C. Edwin Vaughan, a sociologist and longtime activist for the blind, argues that since "in common usage positive pronouns usually precede nouns", "the awkwardness of the preferred language focuses on the disability in a new and potentially negative way". Thus, according to Vaughan, it only serves to "focus on disability in an ungainly new way" and "calls attention to a person as having some type of 'marred identity'" in terms of Erving Goffman's theory of identity.[7]

The National Federation of the Blind adopted a resolution in 1993 condemning politically correct language. The resolution dismissed the notion that "the word 'person' must invariably precede the word 'blind' to emphasize the fact that a blind person is first and foremost a person" as "totally unacceptable and pernicious" and resulting in the exact opposite of its purported aim, since "it is overly defensive, implies shame instead of true equality, and portrays the blind as touchy and belligerent".[8]

In Deaf culture, person-first language has long been rejected. Instead, Deaf culture uses Deaf-first language since being culturally deaf is a source of positive identity and pride.[9] Correct terms to use for this group would be "Deaf person" or "hard of hearing person".[10] The phrase "hearing impaired" is not acceptable to most Deaf or hard of hearing people because it emphasizes what they cannot do.[11]

Most autism activists reject person-first language, on the grounds that saying "person with autism" suggests that autism can be separated from the person.[12]

Advocates of the social model of disability also reject person-first language, defining themselves as "disabled people" and "disability" as the discrimination they face as a result of their impairments.[13]