LINGUIST List 5.1281

Sat 12 Nov 1994

Disc: Political correctness

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Directory

1. George Huttar 709 2400, 5.1230 Political correctness
2. chalklit, fun with political correctness

 In the recent contributions about the putative pejorativeness of
 "politically correct", I was surprised that the following point did not
 come out very clearly, though it is suggested in the comments of "Seth"
 and other contributors to the discussion:

 Many people are critical of what they perceive to be a growing
 restriction of academic freedom on US campuses, whereby those not
 "politically correct" on certain points are sometimes removed from the
 classroom, have their tenure threatened, fail to get hired though
 better qualified than pc applicants, etc. Such people use "politically
 correct" with the heavily pejorative connotation of "tending to be
 intolerant of other views, basing ones intolerance on someone's
 arbitrary definition of what is 'correct', rather than acknowledging
 that what is 'correct' depends on ones presuppositions and thus, among
 other things, on what one chooses to let count as evidence - contra the
 'scientific' tradition academics are supposed to so vigorously
 espouse."

 George Huttar

While the term "political correctness" first gained wide usage in
relation to Chairman Mao, the concept of being careful not to offend
minorities etc. goes back well before the early 1980's. The satirist
Stan Freberg had a routine where someone was trying to sing "Old Man
River," and the 'censor' wouldn't let him continue; he had to change
even the title of the song to "Elderly man river." This was in the
1950's. I suppose now you'd have to say "Senior person river."
Susan Fischer