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There is an amazing David Foster Wallace essay called Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars Over Usage that you can read here (scanned images from a m

There is an amazing David Foster Wallace essay called Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars Over Usage that you can read here (scanned images from a magazine, sorry)[1]. The most relevant quote: > There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact---in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself---of vastly more help to conservatives and the U.U. status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were. Were I, for instance, a political conservative who opposed taxation as a means of redistributing national wealth,I would be delighted to watch PCE progressives spend their time and energy arguing over whether a poor person should be described as "low-income" or "economically disadvantaged" or "pre-prosperous" rather than constructing effective public arguments for redistributive legislation or higher marginal tax rates on corporations.(Not to mention that strict codes of egalitarian euphemism serve to burke the sorts of painful, unpretty, and sometimes offensive discourse that in a pluralistic democracy leads to actual political change rather than symbolic political change. In other words, PCE functions as a form of censorship, and censorship always serves the status 1. http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0...

BoiledCabbage 6y ago
And you post this without any hint of irony that Conservatives were the ones calling the estate tax the "death tax", and during the health care debate naming things "death panels". Words have implications - people care about the implications of words. All groups use and choose words to promote abs convey certain ideas they want conveyed.
- nwienert 6y ago
  And you post this without and hint of irony that Liberals were the ones calling dismantling the second amendment “common sense gun control” and continually classifying more and more regular speech as “hate speech”. Words have implications - but it’s not just one side that manipulates them. Everyone does. I actually agree though, master/slave is worth moving away from. We can care about small things without losing track of the big ones.
etrabroline 6y ago
So his argument against political correctness is that it doesn't do enough to advance the ideas of those advocating for it. This is your typical confused conservative trying to argue against liberalism by saying it isn't being liberal enough. Needless to say it's a bad and disingenuous argument.

BoiledCabbage 6y ago

And you post this without any hint of irony that Conservatives were the ones calling the estate tax the "death tax", and during the health care debate naming things "death panels". Words have implications - people care about the implications of words. All groups use and choose words to promote abs convey certain ideas they want conveyed.

nwienert 6y ago
And you post this without and hint of irony that Liberals were the ones calling dismantling the second amendment “common sense gun control” and continually classifying more and more regular speech as “hate speech”. Words have implications - but it’s not just one side that manipulates them. Everyone does. I actually agree though, master/slave is worth moving away from. We can care about small things without losing track of the big ones.

etrabroline 6y ago

So his argument against political correctness is that it doesn't do enough to advance the ideas of those advocating for it. This is your typical confused conservative trying to argue against liberalism by saying it isn't being liberal enough. Needless to say it's a bad and disingenuous argument.