Here's something interesting to read Neubob, if you have some time to read it...it is somewhat lengthy. It is a psychoanalytical explanation of political correctness.
Psychodynamics of Political Correctness Personally I don't see PC as being a form of politeness. Quite the opposite. I see it as a heavy handed and oppressive form of avoiding or squelching debate. A common characteristic of PC is the changing of traditional vocabulary to describe things...from the specific to the vague in order to confuse. Confusion is the desired effect of political correctness. How many times have you seen a speaker receive a standing ovation for a speech you couldn't understand? You may ask yourself why someone didn't raise their hand and ask the speaker to explain themselves better? The answer is simply because no one else understands the presentation either, but they don't have the courage to stand up and demand "Hey wait a minute here. What did you say?" It's polite to applaud a good speech. It's PC to applaud a speech consisting of psychobabble.
What is psychobabble? When clear meaning is perverted with words which have a multitude of meanings with no clear meaning at all, we have "psychobabble." Psychobabble is something the PC crowd finds of very great value, since it can be used as a handy replacement for thinking. Psychobabble just sounds important and definitive. Simple example of PC psychobabble: "janitor" is transformed to "sanitary engineer." We know what a janitor does. What the heck does a sanitary engineer do? Why is the word "janitor" somehow demeaning? It's an honorable and necessary occupation. Why does it have to sound like more than it is?
PC is psychobabble, but PC demands applause of approval instead of hard questions. To do so would be un PC. Academic and university settings are notorious for this, because no one wants to look stupid among their peers by admitting they don't understand a speaker. I think this is how PC has gained such a strong foothold. Psychobabble is overflowing in these institutions of higher learning.
Because language is so closely related to culture, to change traditional language has the effect of changing traditional culture. If language becomes vague and less descriptive, (or worse... becomes deceiving,) the cultural result will be more towards a blurring of the objective and subjective, and we see this with a PC moral relativity attempting to confuse an understanding of absolute right and wrong. PC tries to equalize cultures (multiculturalism), so if something is ok for one culture but not acceptable here, PC will validate it on the grounds it is ok for that culture, so why not here? It will not deal with absolutes because absolutes don't exist in a realm of vagueness and non reality.
PC also minimizes or dismisses contributions by Western civilization (Greece and Rome) in favor of those made by lesser civilizations. Admittedly we do now know more about some of those civilizations and they are very interesting and have made important contributions, but they should never overlord unarguably significant contributions of universal importance. One aspect of PC is the removal of the notion of achievement and merit. I wonder if the words "good", "better" and "best" will eventually disappear from our dictionaries.
PC is a regressive social phenomenon, the purpose of which is to reserve power to "the anointed." In this case, PC is an attempt by academics to decide how everyone else should speak and act. After all, they know best what is politically correct not just for them, but for us as well.
Les
