6 ms·

If we suppose the choice of words is a trivial matter then one wonders what a nontrivial choice of words would look like, if that is even possible. The "choice

If we suppose the choice of words is a trivial matter then one wonders what a nontrivial choice of words would look like, if that is even possible. The "choice of words" argument reminds me of a teenager, upon swearing at his mother, protesting that he is "just using a word". Of course he gets grounded anyway, and in time most people learn to outgrow that pseudological pedantry. In reality we use words that mean things and express ideas, and the ideas expressed in words like the N-word are generally odious and useless. And I would hesitate to assume that avoiding referring to an entire category of people with a swear word, associated with centuries of stereotypes and oppression, is merely a "moral fashion". I didn't know that conveying the barest level of respect toward your fellow man was a "moral fashion".

jasallen 13y ago
Some words like "oriental" or "retard" are very often used very innocently with no negative connotations or intents, though. "Political correctness" is an issue because we demonize people for trying to communicate with non-approved grammar. Sure, people who knowingly inject offense into their speech and then cry 'free speech' are assholes. So too, though, are the people that cry foul at someone else innocently (if naively) expressing themselves.
- tptacek 13y ago
  The problem isn't the intent of the speaker. The problem is that the words themselves carry an intrinsic charge; they create an outsized potential for negative thoughts and impressions in the listener regardless of intent. There are neutral, more purely descriptive words that equally easy to use in conversations, and so it makes sense to push the negatively charged terms out. Fashions will change, but Paul Graham is accidentally creating the impression that fashion is purely random. It is not. The word "retard" as a reference for the mentally handicapped is not going to come back into fashion; it has been obsoleted by a better understanding of both the processes of mental and developmental disability and of the role of the mentally handicapped in society. Which is all for the better, because the verb "retard" is useful, and it would be great if fashion made it less clumsy sounding in normal speech.
  - jasallen 13y ago
    I suppose I would disagree: that the fashions are random, or largely so. "retard: to slow": yet "mentally retarded" changes to "mentally handicapped" to "mentally disabled". Going strictly by the original definitions, I'm just not seeing the better accuracy of the later terms. As a counter example, I applaud the gay community for putting the brakes on the politically-correct-damning of the word "gay" which was on it's way to becoming an 'offensive' term. I suppose some still things it is, and of course some teenagers still use it with ill intent, but I think most agree that it's not 'bad' when used in a 'proper' manner.
    - tedunangst 13y ago
      mentally differently abled, please.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    The problem is that the words themselves carry an intrinsic charge I'd say that is precisely what they don't do. That's magical thinking (what sort of energy is this "charge"?) and I think it's the core of what's wrong with political correctness: people imagine that they're fixing reality by doing surgery on language, but they're not; they're fixing a reflection of reality, with "fixing" in the sense of "price-fixing". In other words it's photoshopping. That's why intent matters: it actually exists, while the intrinsic power of bad words does not. Ignore intent and you end up in an absurd place. In extreme cases this leads to personal harm being caused, but those are pretty rare. What bugs me more is how rigid people get when they try to correct others. That special blend of prissiness and condemnation is an anti-peanut-butter-cup, and it just makes me want to say "jehovah" over and over again like the dude in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hlMK7tCks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hlMK7tCks. It also misses how language really works. Language changes as people change. We can't control it, and it's silly to pretend that we can. That's like King Canute who ordered the waves to stop (except Canute's whole point was that they wouldn't comply, even for a king). The truth about all this is told by the great comedians who mine the contradictions between language and social norms. Is there one piece of great comedy defending the politically correct view of language? I'd love to see it. p.s. Just to be clear, I don't mean that you try to censor other people—I've never noticed anything of the sort. It's clear that your interest in this topic is in wanting not to hurt others with words inadvertently. That's totally distinct from the language-police impulse and I admire it. But I disagree with your model, I think.
pg 13y ago
Conveying respect is not a fashion. The fashions are in who you're supposed to respect and how you're supposed to show it. You can read more about this here: http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html
- comicjk 13y ago
  How about respecting all people, if it's no trouble to you, in the way they want to be respected? And by the way, wordsmith, it's "the fashions are in whom you're supposed to respect."
  - pg 13y ago
    I don't think you'd actually want to do that. There have been throughout history lots of people who on account of their birth or religion have wanted to be treated as superior to some other group. Would you just want to go along with that? In fact it would be impossible to do what you suggest, because the ways in which people want to be respected could be (and often have been) incompatible. For example, what if two people with different religions both want to be treated as believers in the one true religion? There are also plenty of individual cases we'd both find hard to swallow. Murderers who wanted to be regarded as upstanding people, and so on. (And "who" in this case is much stronger. "Whom" introduces a jarringly pedantic note.)
    - comicjk 13y ago
      Yes, all this is the reason I said "if it's no trouble to you." Certainly the desire for politeness can go too far, but avoiding a handful of loaded words is not very far. I don't think it's quite fair to compare a black man not wanting to be called boy with a murderer wanting to be called innocent.
      - pg 13y ago
        It's no trouble to me to reinforce someone's mistaken feeling of superiority to someone else. The problem is for the someone else. So the threshold you propose is insufficient. And I nowhere compared the two cases you mention. (That was an extreme case of putting words into one's mouth even for HN.) You're acting as if I said for ∀x-P(x) when in fact it's pretty clear I said -∀xP(x). I'm done with this conversation, incidentally. I find that threads in which I have to say "no, what I said was" to this extent are always irrecoverable.
mvaliente2001 13y ago
Yes, but it's the intention of the teenager what's matter. There's a difference between Mel Gibson talking ill about jews and Sara Silverman or Lisa Lampanelli doing the same. Another thing I don't buy is that idea that if you use "the N word" you're reviving two hundreds years of slavery, oppression and racisms. Certainly, if someone is racist, he'll use the word with hate. But pronouncing two syllables out loud doesn't transform you in a racist. I think that most people can discern when you use a word with hate and when you don't. But there's some power in banning in words, in becoming a self-appointed speech police and to attack people by the way they talk instead of the content of their thoughts. I consider more dangerous to make certain words a taboo. There's an old saying in Spanish: the word "dog" doesn't bite.

jasallen 13y ago

Some words like "oriental" or "retard" are very often used very innocently with no negative connotations or intents, though. "Political correctness" is an issue because we demonize people for trying to communicate with non-approved grammar. Sure, people who knowingly inject offense into their speech and then cry 'free speech' are assholes. So too, though, are the people that cry foul at someone else innocently (if naively) expressing themselves.

tptacek 13y ago
The problem isn't the intent of the speaker. The problem is that the words themselves carry an intrinsic charge; they create an outsized potential for negative thoughts and impressions in the listener regardless of intent. There are neutral, more purely descriptive words that equally easy to use in conversations, and so it makes sense to push the negatively charged terms out. Fashions will change, but Paul Graham is accidentally creating the impression that fashion is purely random. It is not. The word "retard" as a reference for the mentally handicapped is not going to come back into fashion; it has been obsoleted by a better understanding of both the processes of mental and developmental disability and of the role of the mentally handicapped in society. Which is all for the better, because the verb "retard" is useful, and it would be great if fashion made it less clumsy sounding in normal speech.
- jasallen 13y ago
  I suppose I would disagree: that the fashions are random, or largely so. "retard: to slow": yet "mentally retarded" changes to "mentally handicapped" to "mentally disabled". Going strictly by the original definitions, I'm just not seeing the better accuracy of the later terms. As a counter example, I applaud the gay community for putting the brakes on the politically-correct-damning of the word "gay" which was on it's way to becoming an 'offensive' term. I suppose some still things it is, and of course some teenagers still use it with ill intent, but I think most agree that it's not 'bad' when used in a 'proper' manner.
  - tedunangst 13y ago
    mentally differently abled, please.
- gruseom 13y ago
  The problem is that the words themselves carry an intrinsic charge I'd say that is precisely what they don't do. That's magical thinking (what sort of energy is this "charge"?) and I think it's the core of what's wrong with political correctness: people imagine that they're fixing reality by doing surgery on language, but they're not; they're fixing a reflection of reality, with "fixing" in the sense of "price-fixing". In other words it's photoshopping. That's why intent matters: it actually exists, while the intrinsic power of bad words does not. Ignore intent and you end up in an absurd place. In extreme cases this leads to personal harm being caused, but those are pretty rare. What bugs me more is how rigid people get when they try to correct others. That special blend of prissiness and condemnation is an anti-peanut-butter-cup, and it just makes me want to say "jehovah" over and over again like the dude in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hlMK7tCks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hlMK7tCks. It also misses how language really works. Language changes as people change. We can't control it, and it's silly to pretend that we can. That's like King Canute who ordered the waves to stop (except Canute's whole point was that they wouldn't comply, even for a king). The truth about all this is told by the great comedians who mine the contradictions between language and social norms. Is there one piece of great comedy defending the politically correct view of language? I'd love to see it. p.s. Just to be clear, I don't mean that you try to censor other people—I've never noticed anything of the sort. It's clear that your interest in this topic is in wanting not to hurt others with words inadvertently. That's totally distinct from the language-police impulse and I admire it. But I disagree with your model, I think.

pg 13y ago

Conveying respect is not a fashion. The fashions are in who you're supposed to respect and how you're supposed to show it. You can read more about this here: http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html

comicjk 13y ago
How about respecting all people, if it's no trouble to you, in the way they want to be respected? And by the way, wordsmith, it's "the fashions are in whom you're supposed to respect."
- pg 13y ago
  I don't think you'd actually want to do that. There have been throughout history lots of people who on account of their birth or religion have wanted to be treated as superior to some other group. Would you just want to go along with that? In fact it would be impossible to do what you suggest, because the ways in which people want to be respected could be (and often have been) incompatible. For example, what if two people with different religions both want to be treated as believers in the one true religion? There are also plenty of individual cases we'd both find hard to swallow. Murderers who wanted to be regarded as upstanding people, and so on. (And "who" in this case is much stronger. "Whom" introduces a jarringly pedantic note.)
  - comicjk 13y ago
    Yes, all this is the reason I said "if it's no trouble to you." Certainly the desire for politeness can go too far, but avoiding a handful of loaded words is not very far. I don't think it's quite fair to compare a black man not wanting to be called boy with a murderer wanting to be called innocent.
    - pg 13y ago
      It's no trouble to me to reinforce someone's mistaken feeling of superiority to someone else. The problem is for the someone else. So the threshold you propose is insufficient. And I nowhere compared the two cases you mention. (That was an extreme case of putting words into one's mouth even for HN.) You're acting as if I said for ∀x-P(x) when in fact it's pretty clear I said -∀xP(x). I'm done with this conversation, incidentally. I find that threads in which I have to say "no, what I said was" to this extent are always irrecoverable.

mvaliente2001 13y ago

Yes, but it's the intention of the teenager what's matter. There's a difference between Mel Gibson talking ill about jews and Sara Silverman or Lisa Lampanelli doing the same. Another thing I don't buy is that idea that if you use "the N word" you're reviving two hundreds years of slavery, oppression and racisms. Certainly, if someone is racist, he'll use the word with hate. But pronouncing two syllables out loud doesn't transform you in a racist. I think that most people can discern when you use a word with hate and when you don't. But there's some power in banning in words, in becoming a self-appointed speech police and to attack people by the way they talk instead of the content of their thoughts. I consider more dangerous to make certain words a taboo. There's an old saying in Spanish: the word "dog" doesn't bite.