OUR VIEW: Drop the PC and say what you mean

As journalists, we at The Statesman like to believe we have at least some command over the English language. Commas, hyphens and semicolons – wait, scratch the last one – are all favorites, but of all the elements of the language, we’re most partial to words.

Words. What are they anyway? At a casual glance they are a bunch of letters and syllables combined to convey a symbol or message of some sort. Inherently there is nothing wrong with words themselves.

Not according to the Politically Correct Police. Oops, we messed that up too. It should read Politically Correct Law Enforcement Officers. Politically correct speech has filtered into practically every facet of society, making it difficult to know exactly which words to use in any given situation for fear of offending someone or something.

Though the exact origin of political correctness is unknown, one of the early uses of the word was in communist countries, derived from Marxist vocabulary. Wait a second. Politically correct speech is a byproduct of communism? Wow, that sounds very un-American to us. Strangely enough, this idea was adopted in American culture and has infiltrated everyday speech.

Political correctness stems from the idea that words are more than a collection of well-structured letters. Words have meanings attached to them and these meanings change throughout time. What one word may mean to one person may mean something entirely different to another, causing offense. So, to avoid offending others, a substitute word – called a euphemism – is put in place and tagged with the very official-sounding title of politically correct. Of the nearly one million words in the English language – most of us knowing only a small fraction of these – many have been blacklisted (oops, that’s probably not PC either) and replaced with PC phrases.

Some great ones include:

poor – monetarily challenged.

meter maid – parking enforcement adjudicator

garbage man – sanitation engineer

housewife – domestic engineer

man hole – maintenance hole

This shortlist is vastly exceeded by the “(fill in the blank) challenged” phrases like visually challenged (blind), gravitationally challenged (fat), aesthetically challenged (ugly) or even morally challenged (a criminal). With this line of thinking, with a failed assignment, we could consider ourselves academically challenged, or when challenged for cheating, we can consider ourselves creatively challenged. Hey, maybe these can count as disabilities as well and we can all apply for a scholarship.

Seriously, who decides what’s politically correct and the words that are strictly taboo? Some backwoods redneck in Western Kentucky (Notice the two PC violations there)? And why is it politically correct anyway? Most people aren’t involved in politics at all, as the voting records show. Shouldn’t this phrase be socially correct then? Wait, did we just find a more politically correct way to say politically correct?

Let’s face it, words are words. And while we’d all like to think the phrase ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me,’ is true, words can and sometimes do hurt. Racism, hate crimes and bigotry of all sorts are not acceptable. There is no place for calling people names and branding them as such-and-such.

At the same time, there is no need to prohibit the use of words that are perfectly acceptable. Ugly is OK to say. So is drunk. So is woman. So is man.

It’s time we use the English language as it was designed to be used and drop the pious attitude toward acceptable and unacceptable words.