The Forum > Article Comments > Manhole or a personhole? A study of political correctness > Comments
Manhole or a personhole? A study of political correctness : Comments
By Rebecca Huntley, published 30/8/2005Rebecca Huntley argues it is the Left rather than the Right that want to frustrate free speech with the new political correctness.
- Pages:
-
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Page 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
-
- All
They may speak harshly, truthfully, with subterfuge, behind coded smoke screens and euphemisms, with a painful patronage to exagerated delicate sensibilities, 'correcting' the discourse... whatever.
Most of that guff just clouds the message and makes it hard to say anything or understand what is being said. It gets real tedious, real fast, when one has to constantly skirt around weak and frail minds and emotive personalities in an effort to communicate in the way that the speaker does not make the listener uncomfortable. Constant self censorship, factual and political revisionism of language and generally having to think five steps ahead is tiresome. Whats wrong with saying 2+2=4 instead of 2+2-2+2*0+2=2? Its quicker and less confusing.
The point of political correctness has little (nothing?) to do with so called respect and regard for a persons emotional sensibilities and their propensity to be endlessly offended. Politics is about POWER and CONTROL. Correctness is about validating the body politic, ie validating the pursuit of power and control. In fact l would suggest that the term 'political correct' is in fact a wounderful example of a political correction. It sounds good, laudible and proper. That is the point. But it is merely a euphemism for SELF CENSORSHIP.
This is pretty much what George Orwell was on about in his seminal classic 1984, that language is a very powerful tool in CONTROLLING people. Control is at the heart of POLITICS. Once you subvert the language, definitions and discourse you control the very ability of people to think independently, because the linguistic building blocks of thought have been corrupted. Once you have removed the capacity for independent thought you essentially nueter the people's ability to express discontent and their capacity for dissent. This is to politicians what junk is to a junkie.
That is the essence of political corrections... to nueter the people and their capacity for self determination thru the process of re-engineering language and getting the people to CENSOR themselves.