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It's interesting as I agree with the points the article makes, but come to the opposite conclusion. Euphemisms don't need to be changed, because it's not the wo

• Joker_vD 2y ago
  The thing is, nobody wants to be crippled (sorry, disabled): as the saying goes, it's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick, you know. Similarly, nobody wants to be stupid. Or unable to navigate social interactions in the current socially acceptable way. While one can adopt to being any of those things, it's additional (sometime herculean) effort which only brings you back to the baseline. And things people don't like to be, they don't like to be called/implied that they are either: so e.g. every time there is a new euphemism for stupidity or mental disability, it inevitably, as it becomes wider known, starts being used as an insult. Which is the root problem IMHO: people often insult each others, fully intentionally. Remove that human trait, and the need for euphemisms will evaporate. But that'll never happen, of course.
  • amiga386 2y ago
    It seems to be the dynamic between two entirely different sets of people, with diametrically opposed aims. One group wishes to spread awareness of afflicted people, in the belief they can improve the empathy shown to such people by society, even though it's at odds with human fear of disease and disfigurement. It's one thing to be crippled, it's another to crippled and society finds you repulsive and treats you like shit. This group reckon that the afflicted need a good marketing campaign. This is why they're coming up with media strategies, slogans, and of course euphemisms. Why it's National Unfortunate Bugger Day today! Let's take a look at the plight of these poor bastards and be quietly relieved we don't have their problems. The other group is the rest of humanity, and when they feel the need to insult their peers, they reach for the strongest words they can muster. As you say, it's inevitable. In the words of Professor F. J. Lewis: See that <horrible thing>? That's you, that is. That's you trying your best. The UK's Blue Peter and the National Spastics Society found this out the hard way when in 1981 they broadcast a story on Joey Deacon, a man with cerebral palsy. Blue Peter wanted children to learn about how Joey was intelligent, but his condition made it very hard to communicate that. What actually happened after the broadcast is that "joey" and "spastic" became the hot new playground insults, along with impersonating Joey's speech mannerisms. It was so bad that the National Spastics Society renamed itself to "Scope" to avoid the negative connotations the word had picked up. Of course, UK children then adopted "scoper" as an insult too. This didn't reach the USA at all, which is why "spaz" is a mild insult in US English, while in the UK it's a grave insult.
    • smeej 2y ago
      I think the desire to insult comes from the unwillingness to take responsibility for one's own reactions. If I'm upset, I want it to be your fault. I want you to be in the wrong. I don't want to admit that I'm responsible for my reactions even when you are doing something wrong. It's much harder work to master myself than to complain that you haven't mastered yours. I know someone who has resorted to, "This displeases me," as his condemnation of choice to combat this tendency, to keep right in front of himself the reality of the situation, that he doesn't like something, but his displeasure is his responsibility. I think that recognition has to happen to make space for a response to the situation, rather than a reaction to it. Does my displeasure motivate me to take action? If so, what kind? Are other people pleased by the situation? Can I see it their way? Is their response measured, or reactionary? It buys time, and inserting a beat between the event and the response makes all the difference.
• vintermann 2y ago
  Euphemism treadmill also has a dark class-side. It takes effort to learn about the new terms, and choose the right one for your audience. It's entirely possible to offend people by other people's preferred term. At the very least you'll come off as less conscious, less sensitive.
  • galdosdi 2y ago
    Very well put. Ageism too. It's a way for the young to feel superior to the old without having to actually accomplish anything. Too lazy to study the past? Just say it all sucks anyway and even learning about it would morally sully you! Too dull to engage in complex arguments? Just slander your interlocutor based on their "outdated" language. For some, it's an intellectual version of bullying the poorer and older and less well connected for having unfashionable clothes. Paul Graham wrote in 2004 on this better than I could. "What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed." And he gave really good practical advice: "Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist", as is anyone suspected of liking the color. People who like orange are tolerated but viewed with suspicion. Suppose you realize there is nothing wrong with yellow. If you go around saying this, you'll be denounced as a yellowist too, and you'll find yourself having a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists. If your aim in life is to rehabilitate the color yellow, that may be what you want. But if you're mostly interested in other questions, being labelled as a yellowist will just be a distraction. Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot." https://paulgraham.com/say.html https://paulgraham.com/say.html
    • chrisweekly 2y ago
      "Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot." Keeper
      • HKH2 2y ago
• throwup238 2y ago
  > I think the real problem with euphemisms displacing the original words, is generally they're vaguer. One example is "person of colour" should literally mean everybody, but it's just used as a drop-in replacements for the words before it that are now considered offensive. Substituting one phrase for another does nothing to adjust people's prejudices or intentions when using a word. I thought the whole point of the PoC euphemism was to be vaguer. It’s not literally everyone, it’s everyone except white people. It’s not a replacement for other euphemisms so much as a supergroup meant to include other minorities in the conversation (one very much in a Western context).
  • ralferoo 2y ago
    My point was that the words are vaguer, and so less easy to comprehend. White is a colour, pink is a colour, green is a colour. Taking the words literally, everybody is a "person of colour". You can't directly intuit the meaning of the phrase, it requires acquisition of the specific cultural meaning. But good point about the diversity aspect - you're right, that is a good reason to make the terms more inclusive.
  • serial_dev 2y ago
    But to me (not a native speaker), "person of color" is vague and misleading. I didn't even automatically know it's about the person's skin color. First I thought it means a flamboyant, over-the-top person. If I think about colors in the scientific sense (black: lack of light, white: mixture of lights from all colors), the "person of color" expression would include everyone except black people, but how it is used, it includes everyone except white people (wherever we draw this "white-enough" line, depending on the context). Why not just use "non-white person"?
    • layer8 2y ago
      As a child I always found “white” weird, because the skin of white people isn’t actually white. The same for black, red, and yellow. The only one that seems accurate is “brown”. So maybe it should be “brown” and “non-brown”. ;)
    • 2y ago
• everdrive 2y ago
  "person of colour" is especially funny since that's the polite term, but the near identical "colored people" is deeply offensive. Why? Because it's associated with the evil old viewpoints, and really no other reason.
  • asddubs 2y ago
    yes, and saying the n word is deeply offensive but ginger is not even though it contains the exact same letters. very deep, very smart. soon you'll figure out that all words are arbitrary sounds we assign meanings to
    • zeroonetwothree 2y ago
      What a bad analogy. One is an anagram and the other is two phrases with (mostly) the same literal meaning.
      • asddubs 2y ago
        and flammable and inflammable mean the same thing but also the opposite thing. the point is that words don't have strict definitions, it's messy and similar phrases can have wildly different connotations. you can't just look at the meaning of individual words and say it's arbitrary.
    • QuercusMax 2y ago
      a couple of Gs, an I and N, and E and and R.... - from Prejudice by Tim Minchin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw
  • Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
    "Person of color" puts the personhood before the non-whiteness. "Colored people" does the opposite. The difference is subtle, and in most cases, I would argue that "colored people" was just the term of the times and did not intend to imply inferiority. Give it another ~20 years for the people who made "people of color" the popular term to have their children come of age and they'll decide that "people of color" is offensive for some reason.
• PaulHoule 2y ago
  There's also a function of words and phrases used to divide people. For instance there are the people who always capitalize the word "black" when it is used to refer to black people and then there are people who capitalize it the same way you would capitalize any other word. Bloomberg Businessweek is one of the worst offenders: they always capitalize "black" on top of the frequently bad typography and what looks like pandering to Gen Z but is probably really aimed at older people who want to feel like they are with it. The thing is they have reviews of $2000 a night hotel rooms and $400 bottles of booze. Maybe they are just trying to make the $300 a night hotel room and $50 bottle of booze look affordable, but it damages their credibility as advocates for the downfallen. It's completely real that black people face problems today and faced problems in the past. Changing a "b" to a "B" doesn't change any of that, but it's a great way to get labeled as a "racist" because you don't sign on to some superficial "anti-racist" behavior. (The kind of language engineering seems to be more of a right than left thing, but the right does like to coin phrases like "luxury belief" and if you want to believe the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis the phrase "illegal alien" is a singular case of a phrase "going viral" and having a powerful political impact, much more than things like "latinx")
  • gotoeleven 2y ago
    >>>(The kind of language engineering seems to be more of a right than left thing, but the right does like to coin phrases like "luxury belief" and if you want to believe the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis the phrase "illegal alien" is a singular case of a phrase "going viral" and having a powerful political impact, much more than things like "latinx") Did you say this backwards? And luxury belief and illegal alien aren't euphemisms, they are specific terms with a set meaning. Illegal alien is a technical legal term with a precise meaning, even. Part of the language engineering dynamic, also, is to try and replace terms that have a precise meaning (illegal alien) with fluffier less precise words (undocumented, migrant) so that the idea that is being referred to (someone in the country without the legal right) doesn't even have language that can refer to it. Another example, what is the currently polite term that means "a woman that is not a transwoman"?
    • throwup238 2y ago
• cubefox 2y ago
  > It's interesting as I agree with the points the article makes, but come to the opposite conclusion. Euphemisms don't need to be changed, because it's not the words themselves that are a problem, it's the thoughts and stereotypes that people have about others that are the issue. Those negative "stereotypes" may be actually accurate, while the euphemism may be inaccurately positive. There is a reason the euphemism treadmill exists for various concepts, a reason new euphemisms gradually acquire a negative meaning again. One possible reason is that the category of things in question really has significant negative aspects.
  • pxc 2y ago
    This isn't a simple as words (or ideas or situations) having connotations that are positive or negative. Euphemisms often have to do with trying to mask or reduce contempt or revulsion or scorn", which are directed at the person whose situation or attributes are euphemised. But it is possible to acknowledge that something, or someone's situation, is deeply, fundamentally negative without becoming contemptuous. For instance, when someone snarls 'what, do you think I'm retarded?' or 'it's right there, are you fucking blind*?', they're conveying more than just that it sucks or would suck to be disabled. They're insinuating something like 'it is deeply shameful to be comparable to a disabled person in any way'. There are many, many people who are blind and would say they'd rather not be, or that being blind is mostly negative (a hardship, socially isolating, etc.), and would still take some offense or scoff or register some annoyance at a statement like that. In defense of the euphemizers, to say that we should not display disdain and contempt for mentally handicapped people is not the same thing as to say we should each pretend we're indifferent to taking on brain damage. These things sometimes do run together in practice, but I'd argue that this is merely incidental and an error. The goal of euphemizing isn't the erasure of differences in outcome but the blunting of explicit, directed, personal negative judgment.
    • cubefox 2y ago
      You can easily tell whether it is objectively bad when some concept applies to someone or something or whether the concept is merely used as an insult. For example "retarded". Expressed as an euphemism this would be "very low IQ" or perhaps "mentally challenged". Now the test: How much money would you pay in order to avoid becoming mentally challenged / very low IQ yourself? (Due to some avoidable medical issue perhaps.) I guess most people would pay a lot of money. Losing much of your intelligence is one of the objectively worst things that can happen to you. It would e.g. mean having way worse job opportunities. Which would mean earning less, and having generally a much more unpleasant job, if one gets a job at all. This confirms that it is pretty objectively bad to fall under this concept, regardless of whether people express it with an euphemism or not.
• consteval 2y ago
  > One example is "person of colour" should literally mean everybody No, person of color has a meaning. It's everyone who isn't a white person. South Asian people are still South Asian. Black people are still black. And there's brown people, too. None of that has changed and all those words are still in use. But "person of color" is used to refer to ALL of them when that applies. It's a useful term, really. Because most western societies are majority white. That means sometimes you want to refer to the minority. But they're not all the same, so you can't just say "black" because that's not accurate. So you can use "person of color" in that context and it's more accurate.
  • rootusrootus 2y ago
    > person of color has a meaning. It's everyone who isn't a white person. Can you define white person? Do you use the one-drop rule?
    • consteval 2y ago
      A white person is someone who identifies as white and is generally recognized as white by others. That may seem like a stupid definition, but it covers pretty much all the edge cases. Obviously the 1 drop rule isn't very good. I mean, I definitely have at least a little Romani blood in me and I'm definitely white. It also covers whiteness changing throughout history.
• valand 2y ago
  A similar sentiment: when one can talk about past trauma without reacting negatively, even more joking about it, one has overcome it. While euphesim displacement is naturally occurring, it doesn't mean it is the best course for the common's sanity. Not to mention the namespace exhaustion that goes along with it :D
• zahlman 2y ago
  Indeed. The wrapper article suggests > The crucial thing is to be able to step back from our instinctive reactions to the way such words sound to us now — we can’t help but hear the superseded ones as sounding terrible and the new ones as clean and shiny But to me, the "superseded ones" sound brutally honest, while the new ones sound like doomed attempts to ignore reality - like calling a rose a redbloom because one doesn't like sweet smells. If one believes that harmful attitudes are associated with a term, the problem is the attitudes - and changing the term doesn't make them go away. Changing them faster is irrelevant - the attitudes glom to the new term instantaneously, once people actually become aware that it's actually being used - and the terms will rightly be mocked for their ineffectiveness just as quickly. (Keep in mind, for example, that the term "people of color" dates to at least 1988: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/20/magazine/on-language-people-of-color.html https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/20/magazine/on-language-peop.... But in my universe, it effectively didn't exist until 2012 or so - and indeed, some mockery of the term might well have been my first exposure to it.)
• nayuki 2y ago
  "Person of color" is one of my favorite phrases to hate on these days. On the surface, it sounds like a respectful way to refer to people that belong to a racial minority. But if you do even a second of thinking, you realize that "person of color" is a long way of saying "colored", a word that had serious negative connotations a century ago during the era of segregation in the USA. And if you peel it back even further, "colored" just means "non-white". I suspect that people who say or write "person of color" are giving themselves a pat on the back for using the right euphemism of the year to refer to a (supposedly) marginalized group. But I think the truth is more sinister. They just found a way to say "non-white" without saying those exact words. Speaking personally, I am classified as a person of color. I refuse to refer to myself using that term because it is ridiculous. If you feel tempted to call me that, just use "non-white" instead - it is more honest and transparent. You're putting whites in one category and everyone else in the "other" category. If you think that calling me "non-white" sounds wrong, then you should think that calling me "person of color" sounds equally wrong. If you want to be racist, be openly racist. Don't hide behind fuzzy terms like "person of color". If you meant to convey "non-white", say what you mean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color