4 ms·

I think the phrase "politically correct" has lost all meaning. It used to be used as a synonym for "polite" and now, in the US, it seems to be used as a synonym

by xapata 10y ago

I think the phrase "politically correct" has lost all meaning. It used to be used as a synonym for "polite" and now, in the US, it seems to be used as a synonym for "ignorant and obstinate".

antirez 10y ago
Here my definition is: behaviors that start with a good goal and later turn into a set of taboos.
ConceptJunkie 10y ago
I always took it to mean, "attempting to corrupt the language to force a certain point of view", similar to Orwell's Newspeak. Ignorance and obstinance are symptoms.
- xapata 10y ago
  That's not what it meant back in the 90s. Certainly not like "war is peace". The phrase was most often used to explain what a person wanted to be described as, like, "Please call me handicapped, not retarded."
dragonwriter 10y ago
It's never meant "polite", and the modern use stems from its use in the mid-20th Century as a pejorative for obstinate and ignorant adherence to dogma by American Socialists referring to American Communists who were seen as slavishly following Stalinist orthodoxy.
- xapata 10y ago
  Strange, I remember people using the phrase in sentences where one would otherwise say "polite", like "that's not the polite term" or "that's not the politically correct term". For example, "Oriental is not the politically correct term, say Asian."
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    That use does exist, but it's a (popular in the mid-90s, still occasionally encountered) ironic use that derives from the older (and particularly common by the American Right against the Left in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its peak before the current resurgence among the same political faction) use as a pejorative. So, the modern popularity of the older and original pejorative use isn't "losing meaning" from that use...
    - xapata 10y ago
      In those cases, perhaps its use was objectively ironic, but it was not ironic from the speaker's perspective.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        While a minority of users may not have ironic intent, usually its use in the context referenced is deliberately ironic; the pejorative use has always been far more common, and it's very unusual for someone using the phrase in any sense not to be aware of that and, if not using it in the pejorative sense, be making a deliberate, usually ironic, reference to that well-known sense when using it in any other way.

by xapata 10y ago

I think the phrase "politically correct" has lost all meaning. It used to be used as a synonym for "polite" and now, in the US, it seems to be used as a synonym for "ignorant and obstinate".

antirez 10y ago

Here my definition is: behaviors that start with a good goal and later turn into a set of taboos.

ConceptJunkie 10y ago

I always took it to mean, "attempting to corrupt the language to force a certain point of view", similar to Orwell's Newspeak. Ignorance and obstinance are symptoms.

xapata 10y ago
That's not what it meant back in the 90s. Certainly not like "war is peace". The phrase was most often used to explain what a person wanted to be described as, like, "Please call me handicapped, not retarded."

dragonwriter 10y ago

It's never meant "polite", and the modern use stems from its use in the mid-20th Century as a pejorative for obstinate and ignorant adherence to dogma by American Socialists referring to American Communists who were seen as slavishly following Stalinist orthodoxy.

xapata 10y ago
Strange, I remember people using the phrase in sentences where one would otherwise say "polite", like "that's not the polite term" or "that's not the politically correct term". For example, "Oriental is not the politically correct term, say Asian."
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  That use does exist, but it's a (popular in the mid-90s, still occasionally encountered) ironic use that derives from the older (and particularly common by the American Right against the Left in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its peak before the current resurgence among the same political faction) use as a pejorative. So, the modern popularity of the older and original pejorative use isn't "losing meaning" from that use...
  - xapata 10y ago
    In those cases, perhaps its use was objectively ironic, but it was not ironic from the speaker's perspective.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      While a minority of users may not have ironic intent, usually its use in the context referenced is deliberately ironic; the pejorative use has always been far more common, and it's very unusual for someone using the phrase in any sense not to be aware of that and, if not using it in the pejorative sense, be making a deliberate, usually ironic, reference to that well-known sense when using it in any other way.