Whenever political correctness fades from the headlines, another example pops up. The latest installment comes from Washington State Senate President pro tem Rosa Franklin. She has proposed replacing 54 references to “at risk” or “disadvantaged” children in state law with the term “at hope,” so negative labels won’t undermine their ability to succeed.
Such encouraging re-labeling simply substitutes one euphemism for another, abandoning even the hope of clarity. It tries to eliminate language that might hurt anyone’s feelings, because as Diane Ravitch put it, “advocates for social change have set their sights on controlling reality by changing the way in which it is presented.”
Nothing PC is allowed to be negative. Anything that could be construed as evaluative or judgmental must come across as positive. What cannot be made to appear good in other ways must be achieved through verbal contortions, trading in words with clear meanings for phrases that enmesh us in ambiguity, hindering understanding and useful communication. In fact, even traditional children’s alphabet books would fail “at hope” standards.
“A is for Apple” could not be used, because apples remind people of Eve’s role in the Garden of Eden story, which some might find sexist. “B is for Ball” would be out because of its potential sexual overtones. “C is for Cat” and “D is for Dog” would be unusable because of their possible connection to ideas of verbal sniping (being catty) or being lazy (dogging it). We would, in short, have to abandon those alphabet books for “new and improved” ones.
A PC alphabet book would have to rely on using soothing phrases to mollify potential objections. Given the vast number of words people find ways to object to, it would be almost impossible. But perhaps the following almost-alliterative alphabet of politically correct terms would work.
A can be for Attitudinal Antiquity, which can replace the potentially insulting “old fashioned.” B can be for Botanical Bankruptcy, a kinder, gentler way of saying that someone lacks a green thumb. Cranially Constrained can be substituted for stupid and Diplomatically Deprived for rude, so that stupid and rude people won’t think you noticed. Euphemistic Enhancements could replace accusations of lying.
We could use Follically Fortunate instead of the term hairy, which can upset both the hirsutely over-and underendowed. And being Gravitationally Gifted is certainly better than being fat. In the same vein, since no one likes being called egotistical, we could substitute Honorifically Habituated, and shy people could instead become Interactionally Impaired. Hurt feelings could also be avoided by substituting Judicially Juxtaposed for confused and Karmically Keen for superstitious. Similarly, criminals could be upgraded to Legally Lavish, schizophrenics to Mentally Mobile, and inattentive listeners to Neurologically Noncompliant.
We could turn slobs into people who are Organizationally Overburdened, and replace good-looking people (a term which injures the psyches of those who don’t think the term extends to them) with those who are Perceptionally Preferenced. Complainers can rise to being Quintessentially Querulous, bad dancers to being Rhythmically Repressed, and poor dressers to being Sartorially Stressed. Being old can be transformed into being Temporally Troubled, “lazy bums” to those who are Ubiquitously Underutilized, and those who can’t hold a job can become Vocationally Variable.
W-Z could be left undecided, to avoid hurting anyone’s ego with the implication that they couldn’t help society with their own contributions. But with this approach, we could all be at hope to pass PC muster. Unfortunately, at first, none of us will know what anyone else is saying. And when we do figure out the latest replacements for hurtful expressions mean, people will get just as upset as they did before. Then we’ll have to change them all over again, and still more convoluted vocabulary will be necessary.
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{ 12 comments }
Just how many at risk – I mean “at hope” – kids read Rosa’s crap. The is more a case of a politician puffed up with her own importance than it is any meaningful strengthening of self-esteme in failing kids. I would even go so far as to say that Rosa’s policies have made these kids fail more than any words ever could.
There are no limits to the bounding recesses of governmental self-importance. Next they’ll be telling us what to eat… Oh no, wait, they are!
Wow… Gary that’s impressive. I think you can actually use that to teach the kids. Look at that another interesting idea: An Austrian alphabet book.
This is all quite doubleplusungood.
You can’t win with the Left’s language police. From here:
Just another example of how being “politically correct” almost never coincides with being “actually correct.”
The Biblical tower of Babel is a metaphor for the general destruction of language by a universal totalitarian regime. The debasing of language is inherent in such a regime and must ultimately end in a fracturing of the regime. This is clearly being manifest already in the present society. Contrary to what some commentators have written on this site, the alteration in meaning of words, sometimes to a meaning precisely opposite their original meaning, is not an evolution of language. It is in fact a deliberate destruction of language for political purposes. This destruction of language is inherent to the political system we now have. Thanks to Mike above who referred to Orwell. Orwell wrote 1984 but he also wrote Politics and the English Language. Orwell understood clearly the political debasing of language. As an encouragement to those who believe the story of Babel to be more than a metaphor: the limitation God placed on totalitarian regimes through the limits placed on communications is still in force and cannot be exceeded.
Prof. Galles,
How ironic. I just quoted you, quoting Madison relating his suspicions about democracy, on a Prof. Ravitch blog post where she calls for state level implementation of “national common standards” in public schools.
That Ravitch seems to be an old school alternative, representing a return to meritocratic common sense in this era of political correctness and scientistic hegemony is a mirage. Ravitch’s proposals are Faustian.
Ravitch calls for national common standards to be ‘voluntarily’ arranged by governors. Contradictions abound. Sure maybe the governors agree to something as equals- but then they turn around and shove it down the throats of localities. So much for voluntary. Please add “voluntary” to your list of politically perverted words.
Worse still, Ravitch ignores the fact that governors are subordinate to the Executive Branch of the United States. President Lincoln and his dictatorial posterity ensured that. Obama recently- in the same week that Ravitch published an editorial calling for governor level implementation of standards- issued an Executive Order making governors report to the oval office on security matters. The image of decentralization, if that was the intent of Ravitch, crumbles.
In fact, Ravitch’s plan will only bring the system closer towards fascism.
The National Governors Association is already a lobbying organization receiving Fed grants, taxes and corporation moneys. Big business would love to write standards in exchange for campaign donations.
Using the No Child Left Behind Act to declare the states educationally bankrupt is well within the purview of Presidential power. State level common standards, if put in place, would be just one executive order away from dictatorial co-opting.
Favored big businesses would welcome this usurpation in the same way that Walmart and insurance companies welcome healthcare reform. Walmart knows it would mostly hurt its smaller competitors and insurance companies are set to gain huge windfalls based on forced coverage.
Of course, if this trend continues, eventually the executive branch will also humble big business as the NSDAP did in 1930s Germany.
Ravitch, before you think she is just merely mistaken in a genuine effort to decentralize, also wants an “FDA” of sorts to evaluate school reform proposals. Need I say more? Almost nowhere, except in libertarian circles, will you find discussions weighing free-market reforms against the status quo. The luminaries, like Ravitch, are all situated on the statist paradigm.
The Onion mocks PC language: Available Labor Rate Increases to 10.2%
Or why not put it the other way – people have a to duty to make others feel bad about themselves when they fail. Hence if you ‘play nice’ dumb people will think they competent when they’re wholly incompetent and are feeling good when they should be feeling bad because feeling bad leads to self-correction. Hence in TV talent shows you have big, loud-mouthed, untalented contestants who full of themselves and think they great even though everyone else boos them and wonder why everyone else can’t see their ‘greatness’.
The acronym PC is a bit misleading, I think, because the language it describes is common in many contexts. Another way of saying “PC” is “diplomatic” or even “polite,” and it’s a quality that (most) businesses have embraced eagerly.
People engage in this softening of terms for various reasons, including social engineering and negotiating trades. It prevents conflicts between people in valued relationships. In most contexts, criticizing PC-ness is solely a matter of personal taste, and it doesn’t need to be made into anything more than that, absurd slippery slope and anecdotal arguments notwithstanding.
That’s why we should be more specific, opposing language that’s designed to suit the purpose of casting government acts in an unreasonably generous light. “Enhanced interrogation techniques” is an obvious one. “Collateral damage” another. Euphemisms for disability are far, far down the list of objectionable government language, in no small part because they’ve been around since before the days of governments.
I liked where you were headed until you arrived at Alliteration Island and made the majority of the piece the long alphabet joke. A good, solid B+ for Effort, though.
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