[ExI] "PC"

[Damien Broderick]

This isn't strictly related to the terrorism and naming thread, so 
I've switched subject lines. I find the following quote from an LJ 
blog quite nicely put, and clarifying, on a widespread misunderstanding:

http://ladislaw.livejournal.com/


When the Ministry of Truth Got Ahold of Orwell

During the dustup surrounding the recent online posting of an ethnic 
(or maybe it was religious) slur, some people objected to the 
imposition of what they viewed as political correctness; they 
referred to Orwell in their defense. (The author himself did so....) 
While it is at the very least ironic to see people who identify 
themselves as coming from the political right holding up a socialist 
saint in their defense, it's not like Orwell is "owned" only by his 
political partisans. If the Eric Blair fits, wear him.

However, what we're really seeing is a misuse of Orwell.

The correlations these folks find between politically correct speech 
and the Newspeak of 1984 simply aren't there. Though PC has become a 
kind of swear word--a marvelous twisting of its intent by 
conservatives, though certainly some on the left are to blame for its 
"mission creep"--the purpose of being politically correct in one's 
speech is to cause as little offense as possible to others. This is 
achieved by using the terminology for self-reference employed by 
those who are not you. Certainly such decisions are going to be 
imperfect, but the knowledge that one should at least try to moderate 
language in order to remove innately offensive terms is the key to 
politically correct thinking. It doesn't mean people don't have 
differences and that you don't call each other on them; it purely has 
to do with politeness. When language becomes loaded in unintentional 
ways, we lose exactitude, hostility increases, and people focus on 
the words rather than the message.

Newspeak is about removing words not because they are offensive, but 
because they are precise. Newspeak is about imprecision. Remove 
words, the logic goes, and one removes the very concepts. Orwell was 
not thinking of, say, ethnic slurs or rude speech; he was thinking of 
humanistic language, exacting language, the language of human virtue 
and inhumane horror. The military term "collateral damage" is 
Orwellian precisely because it removes ethics and humanity and human 
suffering from its reach. Newspeak, like some military speech, blunts 
our understanding, and thus blunts our humanity.

Orwell also had concerns about language being infected from the 
outside. He didn't care for all the Latinate constructions that the 
20th century had allowed to infiltrate English. It may seem 
contradictory that someone who, in 1984, warns about words vanishing 
from our language would want to put a halt to new words coming in, 
but Orwell did not think the Latinate words added to our 
expressiveness. English, he felt, was already well equipped to say 
what needed to be said, if only people would set their minds to 
proper use of their native tongue.

Of course, people can take even the clarity of Orwell and distort his 
meaning for their own purposes.

There is a better parallel to politically correct speech, and it's to 
be found in Fahrenheit 451; however, this parallel too misses the 
mark. In Bradbury's satirical future, books don't exist for various 
reasons, including people's inattention and the ubiquitousness of 
television culture. But Bradbury also blames readers for taking 
offense: Catholics don't like reading negative things about 
Catholics, blacks don't like what someone wrote about blacks . . . 
and so forth. In order to stop all the complaining, the book industry 
shuts down. What Bradbury's addressing here is not, however, 
politically correct speech--which, as I said, is merely about 
establishing norms of politeness when referring to those other than 
yourself. People aren't offended because the language is 
inappropriate; people in Bradbury's world object because they refuse 
to have anyone speak at all about the differences that exist. To 
speak of politics, religion, race and sex is to disturb the facade of 
bland sameness, and people don't want their perfect future disturbed. 
As Montag tells his wife, sometimes we need to be shaken up. Bradbury 
objects to a culture that fears confronting its issues, not one 
that's merely addressing itself to impolite forms of speech.