Let me try and explain why I find the kind of discussion over the precise connotations of speech here frustrating.
It seems that people who strongly believe in the importance of eliminating implicit negative connotations in language are often coming from a position where they implicitly accept the premise that it is ok for society to make laws governing activities that individuals choose to partake in that do not impinge on the rights of third parties.
They see some activity that they wish to be permitted either being restricted or under threat of being restricted and they desire to influence the set of permitted activities to match their preferences. The proposed cure is to police language in order to influence the thoughts and preferences of others in a direction that increases acceptance of the favoured activity.
I see this as a mis-diagnosis of the problem. The thought police would not be necessary if we all agreed to allow people to conduct their lives as they choose without threat of interference. I suspect that at some level many of those seeking to control the use of language do so because they ultimately do want to restrict the choices of others and so must fight the battle to control the set of restricted behaviours rather than fighting to remove all restrictions.
To be honest it’s more an elaboration on the ongoing discussion which I was mulling over and posted in reply to your comment because it happened to be the most recent response to one of my posts.
It is an attempt to explain why I don’t think the overall discussion about precise language in this context is fruitful. I’ve clearly passed my previously mentioned tolerance threshold for this sort of thing though so I should probably walk away and think calming thoughts for a while.
Let me try and explain why I find the kind of discussion over the precise connotations of speech here frustrating.
It seems that people who strongly believe in the importance of eliminating implicit negative connotations in language are often coming from a position where they implicitly accept the premise that it is ok for society to make laws governing activities that individuals choose to partake in that do not impinge on the rights of third parties.
They see some activity that they wish to be permitted either being restricted or under threat of being restricted and they desire to influence the set of permitted activities to match their preferences. The proposed cure is to police language in order to influence the thoughts and preferences of others in a direction that increases acceptance of the favoured activity.
I see this as a mis-diagnosis of the problem. The thought police would not be necessary if we all agreed to allow people to conduct their lives as they choose without threat of interference. I suspect that at some level many of those seeking to control the use of language do so because they ultimately do want to restrict the choices of others and so must fight the battle to control the set of restricted behaviours rather than fighting to remove all restrictions.
What does any of that have to do with what I said?
To be honest it’s more an elaboration on the ongoing discussion which I was mulling over and posted in reply to your comment because it happened to be the most recent response to one of my posts.
It is an attempt to explain why I don’t think the overall discussion about precise language in this context is fruitful. I’ve clearly passed my previously mentioned tolerance threshold for this sort of thing though so I should probably walk away and think calming thoughts for a while.