[ExI] need a new word/suffix
Anders Sandberg
anders at aleph.se
Tue Jan 12 10:44:51 UTC 2016
On 2016-01-12 08:49, Brian Manning Delaney wrote:
>
> The problem is that one would run into an overwhelming PC Police
> response in any attempt to create new words that separate hatred from
> fear, since the prevailing view is that all fear of Others is, at
> bottom, hatred (also, and originally of course, though less relevant
> these days: all hatred is fear -- indeed, a pathological fear).
Haha! If you actually did get that response you would be set. There is
nothing like having people explicitly condemn a neologism to make it
spread.
Case in point: the new pronoun "hen" in Swedish. Constructed to mean
"he/she", introduced in a children's book. The combination of gender
equality, children, and language made it the great topic of arguments
back in 2011 - political correctness gone mad! Most people groaned about
it... and now it is used unironically by most, including media.
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/04/linguistic-social-engineering/
The thing is, controversy is just a way of exposing a new word to a lot
of people. If it has the right properties it will spread. At most
opponents can try to give the word associations that are off-putting.
--
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University
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