Political correctness Totally Explained

Political correctness (PC or politically correct) is a term used to describe language, ideas, policies, or behaviour seen as seeking to minimize offence to groups of people. Conversely, the term politically incorrect is used to refer to language or ideas that may cause offense or that are unconstrained by orthodoxy.
   The term itself and its usage are hotly contested. The term "political correctness" is used almost exclusively in a pejorative sense. Those who use the term in a critical fashion often express a concern that public discourse, academia, and the sciences have been dominated by excessive liberal viewpoints.
   Some commentators, usually on the political left, have argued that the term "political correctness" is a straw man invented by the New Right to discredit progressive social change, especially around issues of race and gender.
   The term "political correctness" is derived from Marxist-Leninist vocabulary, and was used to describe the appropriate "party line",, commonly referred to as the "correct line" Those people who opposed (or were seen as opposing) the "correct line" were often punished.. The term was used in communist countries, and by communist and Trotskyist parties.
It was then adopted in several related meanings by some in the U.S. political Left. One example cited by Ruth Perry and was employed by such narrators as Bobby London in his underground comic Merton of the Movement. The alternative term "ideologically sound" followed a similar trajectory to this point, appearing in satirical works such as Bart Dickon comic strips.
   In an example typical of use within the left, Ellen Willis records that "in the early '80s, when feminists used the term 'political correctness' it was used to refer sarcastically to the anti-pornography movement's efforts to define a 'feminist sexuality'".
   In the 1990s, the term became part of a conservative challenge to curriculum and teaching methods on college campuses in the United States (D'Souza 1991; Berman 1992; Schultz 1993; Messer Davidow 1993, 1994; Scatamburlo 1998). In a commencement address at the University of Michigan in 1991, U.S. President George H. W. Bush spoke out against a "movement" who would "declare certain topics off-limits, certain expressions off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits."
   The phrase "politically correct" has become popular in other countries as well, including several Scandinavian countries (politiskt korrekt=pk), Spain and Latin America (políticamente correcto), New Zealand, France (politiquement correct), Germany (politisch korrekt), The Netherlands (politiek correct), Italy (politicamente corretto) and Russia (политкорректность, политкорректный).. Although the dominant use is pejorative, a few authors use the term 'political correctness' to describe inclusive language or civility, and thus praise language that they see as "politically correct".

As linguistic concept

The practice of using "inclusive" or "neutral" language is based on the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which states that a language's grammatical categories shape its speakers' ideas and actions. The objective is to make people aware of unconscious biases, thus allowing them to make more informed choices about their language and their usage of expressions different people might find offensive. While few support the hypothesis in its strong form, many linguists accept a more moderate version, namely that the ways in which we see the world may be influenced by the kind of language we use. In its strong form, the hypothesis states that, for example, sexist language promotes sexist thought.
What critics call "political correctness" is in some cases attempts to use non-offensive language The goal of changing language and terminology consists of several points, including:

Certain people have their rights, opportunities, or freedoms restricted due to their categorization as members of a group with a derogatory stereotype.
This categorization is largely implicit and unconscious, and is facilitated by the easy availability of labeling terminology.
By making the labeling terminology problematic, people are made to think consciously about how they describe someone.
Once labeling is a conscious activity, individual merits of a person, rather than their perceived membership in a group, become more apparent.

The situation is complicated by the fact that members of identity groups sometimes embrace terms that others seek to change. For example, deaf culture has always considered the label "Deaf" as an affirming statement of group membership and not insulting or disparaging in any way. The term now often substituted for the term "deaf", hearing-impaired, was developed to include people with hearing loss due to aging, accidents, and other causes. While more accurate for those uses, the term "hearing-impaired" is considered highly derogatory by many deaf people. The term "Hard of Hearing," however, is considered an acceptable descriptive term for a limited- to non-hearing person.
A further issue is that terms selected by an identity group as more acceptable descriptors will then pass into common use, including use by people whose attitudes are those formerly associated with words which the new terms were designed to supersede. The new terms thus become devalued, and a further set of expressions must be coined. This can give rise to lengthy progressions such as "negro", "colored", "black", "African-American". (See Euphemism treadmill.)

Criticism

General

Critics argue that political correctness implies censorship and endangers free speech by limiting what is in the public discourse, especially in universities and political forums. University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Charles Kors and lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate, connect political correctness to the ideas of Marxist Herbert Marcuse, in particular his claim that liberal ideas of free speech were in fact repressive. They see this "Marcusean logic" as being at the basis of the hundreds of college speech codes formulated on American university campuses.
   Others contend that politically correct terms are awkward, euphemistic substitutes for the original stark language. They also draw comparisons to George Orwell's invented language Newspeak.
   Several political figures claim that political correctness is a serious movement aiming to change the nature of Western society. Thus, Peter Hitchens has written in his book The Abolition of Britain, "What Americans describe with the casual phrase .... political correctness is the most intolerant system of thought to dominate the British Isles since the Reformation". Lind and Buchanan have characterized PC as a technique originated by the Frankfurt School. According to Lind and Buchanan, the work of the Frankfurt School aimed at undermining Western values by influencing popular culture through Cultural Marxism. Buchanan, says, in his book The Death of the West: "Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism, a regime to punish dissent and to stigmatise social heresy as the Inquisition punished religious heresy."
   Opponents of mainstream scientific views on evolution and other issues have claimed that political correctness is responsible for the failure of their views to get a fair hearing. Thus Ted Steele, an associate university professor of biology, says, in his book, Lamarck's Signature: "We now stand on the threshold of what could be an exciting new era of genetic research. ... However, the 'politically correct' thought agendas of the neo-Darwininists of the 1990's are ideologically opposed to the idea of 'Lamarckian feedback' just as the church was opposed to the idea of evolution based on natural selection in the 1850's!"
Camille Paglia, a self-described "libertarian Democrat," argues that political correctness gives more power to the Left's enemies and alienates the masses against feminism.
   Some critics of political correctness claim that it marginalizes certain words, phrases, actions or attitudes through the instrumentation of public disesteem.
   Some conservative critics of political correctness, argue that it's a form of coercion rooted in the assumption that in a political context, power refers to the dominion of some men over others, or the human control of human life; by this argument, ultimately, it means force or compulsion. This argument holds that correctness in this context is subjective, and corresponds to the sponsored view of the government, minority, or special interest group that these conservative critics oppose. They claim that by silencing contradiction, their opponents entrench their views as orthodox, and eventually cause it to be accepted as true, as freedom of thought requires the ability to choose between more than one viewpoint. Some conservatives refer to political correctness as "The Scourge of Our Times."
   Critics of political correctness have been accused of showing the same sensitivity to choice of words they claim to be opposing, and of perceiving a political agenda where none exists. For example, a number of news outlets claimed that a school altered the nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep" to read "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep".. In fact, the nursery, run by Parents and Children Together (Pact), simply had the kids "turn the song into an action rhyme. ... They sing happy, sad, bouncing, hopping, pink, blue, black and white sheep etc . The spurious claim about the nursery rhyme was widely circulated and later amplified into a suggestion that similar bans applied to the terms "black coffee" and "blackboard" . According to Private Eye magazine, similar stories, all without factual basis, have run in the British press since first appearing in the Sun in 1986

As engineered term

Some commentators argue that the term "political correctness" was engineered by American conservatives around 1980 as a way to reframe political arguments in the United States. According to Hutton:
� "Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s as part of its demolition of American liberalism....What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism - by levelling the charge of political correctness against its exponents - they could discredit the whole political project."

Such commentators say that there never was a "Political Correctness movement" in the United States, and that many who use the term are attempting to distract attention from substantive debates over discrimination and unequal treatment based on race, class, and gender (Messer-Davidow 1993, 1994; Schultz 1993; Lauter 1995; Scatamburlo 1998; Glassner 1999). Similarly, Polly Toynbee has argued that "the phrase is an empty rightwing smear designed only to elevate its user".
A similar objection to the discourse surrounding "political correctness" is the claim that doctrinaire insistence on the use of approved words is just as prevalent on the political right. In 2004, then Australian Labor leader Mark Latham described conservative calls for civility as "The New Political Correctness (External Link

). Similar comments were made in relation to the decision to rename French fries as Freedom Fries (External Link

Satirical use

The use of political language modification has a history in comedy and satire. Two of the earlier and famous examples are 1992's Politically Correct Manifesto by Saul Jerushalmy and Rens Zbignieuw X and 1994's Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner, in which traditional fairy tales are rewritten from an exaggerated PC viewpoint. Other examples include Bill Maher's former television program, which was entitled Politically Incorrect and George Carlin's "Euphemisms" routine. (External Link) The Politically Correct Scrapbook also further satirises political correctness.

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