Back when I worked in the arts, I was told I could not use the generic term ‘artists’, because it might offend craftspersons. And, yes, I do mean ‘craftspersons’.
I was required to use the word ‘practitioner’ instead, which a lot of the public thought referred to doctors. I got into endless arguments about this, and was accused of trying to reduce everything to slogans. On one occasion I gave up, and allowed the visual arts department to have the wording they wanted in the press release.
The result was amusing, and I kept it for several years. It was the Stoke on Trent Sentinel, and the gist of the article they published was “We received a communications from West Midlands Arts, but it was written in committee-speak, and we couldn’t understand it. However, we think that there is some kind of a seminar being held, and, if you’re interested, the details are…”
The crowd at West Midlands Arts were a generally loveable bunch, and worked hard for the lot of the artists (sorry, practitioners) that they served. But, having spent ten years of my life trying to write well, I was astonished to learn that I would only be truly accepted if I started writing badly.
Regular readers of Dilbert, of course, will know management-speak inside out. With ‘Redundancies’ becoming ‘down-sizing’, and then ‘down-sizing’ becoming ‘rightsizing’ (without the hyphen), and the dreaded phrase ‘we have no plans to…’, which means ‘we intend to, but we haven’t actually written a plan yet’, it’s well understood that management-speak is a way of communicating something without saying it, and saying something without communicating anything.
Political correctness, though, is a deeper malaise. It begins with the notion that if you control the words, you control what people are able to think. Perhaps the aspiration is a good one. We would all like to be able to get rid of racism, sexism, and so on. Some words, once they have been around for a while, inevitably attract a pejorative meaning. ‘Spastic’ was a term of abuse on all the streets where I grew up. I don’t think any seven year old is now accusing another child of ‘cerebral palsy’. We no longer label things of inferior quality with the name of a derided enemy, like ‘German’ silver (copper-nickel alloy, actually invented in Birmingham) and ‘French’ cricket.
But, but, but. Whether or not the aims of political correctness are laudable, the thing itself is dire. The aim may be to take away the words that enable people to think ‘bad’ thoughts, but, even if this worked, it would not stop them coming up with their own words for them, as small children do quite readily. More importantly, when you take away people’s ability to discuss something rationally, you risk an irrational reaction. Violence follows when words run out all too often. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say “the problem with the world is that we discuss our differences too much clearly, instead of bottling them up”.
Here’s some more reasons why I think political correctness is dreadful.
First off, it is ugly. It uglifies language. While the Plain English Campaign (and any writer with any sense) wants us to use simple, short, anglo-saxon words, instead of long, complex, Latinate words, PC is exactly the opposite. Do you want things ‘improved’, or should they go through a process of ‘optimalisation’? Do you really want to see ‘he/she’ in written texts, or, worse, ‘s/he’?
Second, it doesn’t just reduce ‘bad’ thoughts, it reduces thought altogether. PC speaks in generalities, for fear of excluding or offending particular (often unspecified) groups. But clear thinking requires us to be specific. Exactly what are we saying, exactly what are we not saying?
Third, it is heavily discriminatory. PC is a secret language, and mastery of it is the key to progress in the public, private and charitable sectors. Generally speaking, older people struggle with it, as they’ve got used to the terms they know over sixty, seventy, eighty years. One older couple told me in despair of the way they were now being looked down on and dismissed because words they used which were always acceptable are now deemed ‘offensive’. It exacerbates the educational divide, and makes life steadily harder for people with English as a second language. PC is a modern-day cant, like the secret terms of medieval guilds. I’ve sat in meetings where people have worked out who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ by their ability or inability to master the tricks of the latest round of PC.
Fourth, as often as not, it’s daft. Remember ‘brainstorming’, that great technique for getting a group to pile in all their ideas in a short period of time. Remember when we were suddenly told that ‘brainstorming’ was offensive to epileptics (sorry, that should be ‘people at risk of epilepsy’), and that we had to use ‘idea-shower’ instead? And you remember when it turned out this was not actually offensive to epilepsy sufferers at all? Here’s the link, in case you missed it. Actually, as far as anyone can figure out, brainstorming has never been a term used to describe epileptics. In fact, in the Epilepsy Action survey, many respondents felt that they were being singled out as more easily offended.
Which leads me on to fifth, PC is a form of false representation. As the Americans say, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Birmingham City Council once tried to cancel Christmas (I may be simplifying somewhat…) and rename it ‘Winterval’. One of the arguments put forward was that the term ‘Christmas’ would offend Muslims. It turned out later that no-one had actually consulted the Islamic community, and many Muslims were outraged at being used as the excuse to cancel Christmas. I’ve been in so many meetings where one minority or another has been cited as the reason why a particular (good) idea cannot go forward. ‘It will offend the Asians… it will offend the disabled… it will offend those on low-incomes’. Quite apart from the staggering arrogance of a non-Asian claiming to speak for ‘the’ Asians, it’s interesting that the only groups ever cited are those that are not round the table. Just occasionally I’ve managed to be from one of the groups cited, without anybody knowing (I grew up and lived for years in a heavily deprived area, but because I sound posh and went to Oxford, people who don’t actually know rarely guess this). I’m afraid that the mischievous, ironic side of me has got the better of me more often than not, and I’ve gently played out enough rope for the situation to become completely ridiculous before pointing all this out. When I’m behaving myself, and someone insists than an idea will ‘offend the —’, these days I just ask them what the ‘evidence-base’ for this is (or, as we used to say before PC., the ‘evidence’), and then suggest a focus group or a survey, or just asking someone. Just occasionally, without any irony whatsoever, someone who has blandly asserted that ‘the — ‘ will be offended, then asks me how I could possibly place any reliance on a survey to know whether or not people will be offended. Quite.
Language is rich, powerful, clever, direct, poignant, compelling, hilarious, revealing, persuasive, intimate. But it’s also insinuating, deceptive, confusing, disruptive, distorting. Whenever we say something, we shape our own perceptions, and those of others. Or we skew them, which is another way of saying the same thing. But we do not in any sense reduce the risk of harm by taking away one set of simple, clear, specific, understood terms, and replacing them with complex, muddy, general, unknown ones. We have not seen a reduction in hate, or even in insults, in the forty or so years that PC has had a serious impact on our society.
So I’m not ashamed to say, using the old-fashioned, un-PC words: I really hate political correctness.
Copyright 2009 martinturner.org.uk
