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@Mkfs: your point may have had some validity, say, in the '60s. We now live in a time when identifying with, say, mainstream Christianity can cost someone their job. The nature of PC is, it will not engage in dialogue. It "rules" what can and can't be said. That's how it is today.
Donald Sterling provides a current example of what you are referring to. I agree that political correctness is used to avoid debate or confrontation, and that it is overzealously applied. I just do not follow how you jump from that to PC "redefining concepts like 'true', 'false', etc", or to PC becoming Majority Rule over Individual Rights. If anything, political correctness is often used by an individual in order to force an organization (usually a business or government entity) into granting concessions.
I understand your point. However, the reverse is increasingly true. Corporate America is going quite PC. The media- a collective, if not an oligarchy too- is increasingly tightening and monitering the limits of expression.
What I mean is, clearly it can- and does- work both ways. It can be synergistic: the individual constraining the collective does so more effectively when backed by another collective (a lobby, coalition, etc).
That is true, political correctness can be made institutional (and often is, in academic environments). Getting back to newspeak, PC is similar in the removal/replacement of words (christmas with 'holidays', retarded with 'special ability', etc), but it is different in that the level of expression in language is not being reduced (and if anything, more terms are being added than removed). So while newspeak was intended to exert absolute dominance over the ideas expressed by the populace, PC is only used to prevent the expression of specific ideas (generally those that emphasize racial/religious/other difference). This is a pretty rich topic for discussion -- maybe you'd like to open a discussion thread for it? Shame to leave it buried here in the comments.
Let me clarify: when I say that PC does not reduce the level of expression in the language, I mean in general : there is no wholesale destruction of words (removal of synonyms and such). The "removal" is very targeted, so the language itself is not greatly affected. Only specific subjects are regulated. Of course, a slippery-slope argument can be applied to this, but slippery-slope arguments are a bit of a slippery slope themselves.
@Mkfs: I am all for continuing the discussion. But personally, what with beating off the PC watch-troll here, I am getting rather fatigued with the thread. A closely related topic, however, might be that of surveilance. I recall from the film- though not off-hand, from the book- the scene where Winston is exercising to a TV instructor, as millions do today, when she abruptly addresses him personally, telling him sharply to step up the pace. I wonder how far off we are from that interactive level of surveilance.
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@Mkfs: your point may have had some validity, say, in the '60s. We now live in a time when identifying with, say, mainstream Christianity can cost someone their job. The nature of PC is, it will not engage in dialogue. It "rules" what can and can't be said. That's how it is today.
Donald Sterling provides a current example of what you are referring to. I agree that political correctness is used to avoid debate or confrontation, and that it is overzealously applied. I just do not follow how you jump from that to PC "redefining concepts like 'true', 'false', etc", or to PC becoming Majority Rule over Individual Rights. If anything, political correctness is often used by an individual in order to force an organization (usually a business or government entity) into granting concessions.
I understand your point. However, the reverse is increasingly true. Corporate America is going quite PC. The media- a collective, if not an oligarchy too- is increasingly tightening and monitering the limits of expression.
What I mean is, clearly it can- and does- work both ways. It can be synergistic: the individual constraining the collective does so more effectively when backed by another collective (a lobby, coalition, etc).
That is true, political correctness can be made institutional (and often is, in academic environments). Getting back to newspeak, PC is similar in the removal/replacement of words (christmas with 'holidays', retarded with 'special ability', etc), but it is different in that the level of expression in language is not being reduced (and if anything, more terms are being added than removed). So while newspeak was intended to exert absolute dominance over the ideas expressed by the populace, PC is only used to prevent the expression of specific ideas (generally those that emphasize racial/religious/other difference). This is a pretty rich topic for discussion -- maybe you'd like to open a discussion thread for it? Shame to leave it buried here in the comments.
Let me clarify: when I say that PC does not reduce the level of expression in the language, I mean in general : there is no wholesale destruction of words (removal of synonyms and such). The "removal" is very targeted, so the language itself is not greatly affected. Only specific subjects are regulated. Of course, a slippery-slope argument can be applied to this, but slippery-slope arguments are a bit of a slippery slope themselves.
@Mkfs: I am all for continuing the discussion. But personally, what with beating off the PC watch-troll here, I am getting rather fatigued with the thread. A closely related topic, however, might be that of surveilance. I recall from the film- though not off-hand, from the book- the scene where Winston is exercising to a TV instructor, as millions do today, when she abruptly addresses him personally, telling him sharply to step up the pace. I wonder how far off we are from that interactive level of surveilance.
That's a good (and often overlooked) point.
I don't know how you go from there (making it impossible to express undesirable opinions like racism) to "redefine such basic concepts as 'true', 'false', 'good', 'bad', 'right', 'wrong', etc." Nor how you get "Political Correctness argues Majority Rule over the Rights of the Individual and thus, the rule of the Mob over that of Law." Isn't it the opposite -- an attempt to use The Law (and other powers such as The Media) to address discrimination by Mob or Majority Rule against minority/disadvantaged groups?