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"Science" says old people are less willing to change their language to suit politically correct fads? I wonder what it must say about people too young to recogn

"Science" says old people are less willing to change their language to suit politically correct fads? I wonder what it must say about people too young to recognize the first fashionable wave of politically correct zealotry they happen to get caught up in. There's probably a word for how they feel looking back at themselves later.

svnt 4y ago
There are definitely people overplaying the woke position but language evolves. I’m likely as old as you. Your arrows missed their target here. If Jerry weren’t so identified with his language he might have read the paper and found a middle ground. Instead he’s located himself further in the opposite direction of where we are headed. Not that the paper’s authors know exactly where that is, either.
mumblemumble 4y ago
I can't speak for all generations and all political movements, but the "politically correct zealotry" of my generation is now widely understood to have been on the correct side of history, and, in the eyes of the cultural mainstream, the language we were looking to change has come to be seen, at best, as outdated and slightly embarrassing. That said, I saw it go the other way for some of the issues that one of my older siblings was excited about back in the day. It's just possible that, "This idea seems to be most popular among young people," doesn't actually function as a stunning rhetorical coup de grace for any side of any cultural debate.
- noduerme 4y ago
  >> the "politically correct zealotry" of my generation is now widely understood to have been on the correct side of history Maybe you're right, but if you were in that kind of wave - I guess you mean the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, not the widely mocked PC movement of the 80s? - you were exceptionally lucky from a world-historical point of view. Currently, the same words might also be uttered by one of the hostage takers in the Iranian revolution, any member of the Taliban, or one of the older prison guards at a concentration camp in Xinjiang. (Really. Imagine each of those people saying that sentence). Point being, those words usually sound absurd to anyone who doesn't share your political and cultural frame of reference.
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svnt 4y ago

There are definitely people overplaying the woke position but language evolves. I’m likely as old as you. Your arrows missed their target here. If Jerry weren’t so identified with his language he might have read the paper and found a middle ground. Instead he’s located himself further in the opposite direction of where we are headed. Not that the paper’s authors know exactly where that is, either.

mumblemumble 4y ago

I can't speak for all generations and all political movements, but the "politically correct zealotry" of my generation is now widely understood to have been on the correct side of history, and, in the eyes of the cultural mainstream, the language we were looking to change has come to be seen, at best, as outdated and slightly embarrassing. That said, I saw it go the other way for some of the issues that one of my older siblings was excited about back in the day. It's just possible that, "This idea seems to be most popular among young people," doesn't actually function as a stunning rhetorical coup de grace for any side of any cultural debate.

noduerme 4y ago
>> the "politically correct zealotry" of my generation is now widely understood to have been on the correct side of history Maybe you're right, but if you were in that kind of wave - I guess you mean the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, not the widely mocked PC movement of the 80s? - you were exceptionally lucky from a world-historical point of view. Currently, the same words might also be uttered by one of the hostage takers in the Iranian revolution, any member of the Taliban, or one of the older prison guards at a concentration camp in Xinjiang. (Really. Imagine each of those people saying that sentence). Point being, those words usually sound absurd to anyone who doesn't share your political and cultural frame of reference.
- deleted 4y ago
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