Job Discussion Forums

[Alex42]

I�m going to do a class this week on political correct language. But one thing I need to know is how this language spreads into general usage.

For example, who was it who actually decided that "fireman" should be replaced with "firefighter"? Was it the government? Firefighters themselves? Feminists? Does anyone know?

And once whoever it is has decided on a new politically correct term, how does it get spread into general usage? Do they write to newspapers and publishers saying "you should call "firemen" "firefighters" now!" or what?

Any help answering this question would be greatly appreciated!

(I�m not looking for people�s opinions on the merits or otherwise of politically correct language though, unless someone wants to start another thread on that. )

[EnglishBrian]

I don't imagine many individuals, other than a few very PC people consciously choose to change their use of certain terms. Nor am I aware of any legal reasons applying to life in general, at least in the UK.

I'd guess a lot of the changes come from pressure groups (women for instance) working on/in organisations - media and other large corporations. This might link with anti-sex discrimination practices in the workplace, which of course are enshrined in law. Practices are far from consistant though. In Edinburgh at the G8 summit, when Bush crashed his bike into one of the detectives protecting him, it was described as a police woman on the BBC and a police officer on Bloomberg.

'Nor' and 'enshrined' in one post. I must be getting good at this English lark.

[Chasgul]

Large national institutions have committees that discuss the language they will use in official media. These committees decide what is and is not currently usable. The quick death of 'chairperson' is an example of zealousness on their part that was not reciprocated by the public at large and has generally fallen into disuse.

And the reaction to Bush's fall is easily explained politically - the Brits want it to sound somewhat worse by underlining the fact that he crashed into a woman who then required treatment, the US version tones it down to 'officer' so that it sounds less bad.

[Gregor]

Chasgul has a good point, whether or not he/she's right or not. The English language allows for that type of subtle jab.
As for the original question, Alex, since English doesn't have any official committees set up to make ultimate decisions of usage, like French does, for example, every change has to come about by fiat.
Who STARTS the thing is anyone's guess. But the anti-discriminatory groups certainly help push it forward. There are TONS of these, too. "Chairperson" may have gone out of favor, but that's only because "chair" has replaced it - at least in the U.S. it hasn't gone back to chairman or chairwoman.
Who remembers stewards and stewardesses?
What happens is that some group or other will get ahold of a term and push for it. The government might get involved, but the thing is, in English speaking culture, we are moving away from sexist terms, like it or not. Because of this culture, terms that may seem uncomfortable or awkward even to P.C. people will eventually sound OK, just from constant use.
I have a book by Bill Bryson, in which he writes (in the early '90s) that some terms are just difficult to adopt because they ARE awkward, and the terms that we're trying to replace have the weight of idiom behind them. He gives, as one example, "manhole." Mind you, he is as PC as they come, but he couldn't forsee a change in this and a few other particular terms in the near future, and they are now already old-fashioned, at least in some places. Now we would use "service hole" or "utility access" or some such thing, without even thinking about it.
This is not from some particular group, though. The whole point is that the actual change comes about because of cultural peer preassure.

It's the same as the littering thing. In China, people toss things out their car windows without thinking about it. It's easy to criticize, but I remember my mother actually TELLING me to do that, in the 70s. Who here remembers that in America? After a while, that just became MONUMENTALLY uncool, and the country slowly cleaned up. It was peer preassure. The language thing is the same.

[Henry_Cowell]

Certain PC terms are devised by governments and distributed to the mass media so that the government's philosophy and viewpoint will be the only one permitted. Examples in the U.S. include the following:

1. Resistance to the American-British occupation of Iraq is to be known as the "insurgence" or as "terrorism". The latter two terms are used in U.S. newspapers rather than "resistance".

2. Palestinian lands occupied by Israel are to be known as "disputed" areas or simply as "settlements". The latter two terms are used in U.S. newspapers rather than "occupied territories".

Numerous other examples can be provided of such government-mandated PC usage in the U.S. media.

[Alex42]

Excellent responses there - thanks!

We�re lucky that the English language is pretty gender-neutral and therefore facilitates the use of non-sexist language pretty well. I bet it�s a lot harder in many other languages...

[lajzar]

I wonder if that gender-neutral aspect isn't just conceit on our part.

Of course, the default form for English is gender-free, but it isn't unheard of for ships, cars, and even countries to be assigned a gender.

And looking at other languages, I don't think they really look on grammatical gender as intrinsically related to physical gender. After all, unmarried women are grammatically masculine in German iirc.

[Chris_Crossley]

[Chasgul]

I think 'magd' is maid and 'maedchen' is maiden.

Some people argue that the neuter nature of the diminutives relates to the fact that a maiden was not considered to have attained 'womanhood'.

In Bulgarian it is more obvious: the words for baby, child, boy and girl are all neuter. Gender is applied once they have reached a certain age and become men and women.

It is also notable that trying to explain the use of 'Ms.' to many non-english speakers is often a nightmare because they don't see the point of it.

[EnglishBrian]

Despite being one of the most complicated languages in the world, I'm told that Finnish has no gendering whatsoever.

(I was told this when I was working there but am open to correction. I never actually learnt the language)

[Gregor]

The gender issue is interesting.
First of all, technically speaking, the word "gender" should not refer to human (or animal) "sex'. it's strictly a grammatical term. So an unmarried German woman maybe grammatically masculine, but she's still female. :-)
it's probably very hard to be sure about at this remove, but I find it difficult to believe that grammatical gender is related to actual sex.
Maybe originally, and as languages grew and spread (from, say, Proto-Indo-European or whatever), things just got out of hand.

Another point is that English ISN'T quite gender-free. At least, not as much as we'd like to think it is. As Bill Bryson points out, take any two male/female couplings - master/mistress, governor/governess, bachelor/spinster (though we now have the butt-ugly bachelorette), and you can immediately see that the male word implies power or dominance and the female word seems...submissive, or unimportant.
On that I think that English is moving toward using the male word for both (I believe female actors prefer this, and I know a few female waiters who do as well), or a more neutral term (e.g. flight attendant, for steward/stewardess).
One that still bugs me is the issue of singular constructions where the sex is unsure - "Every student will be given his books at registration." This is not gender-neutral. Or rather, some grammarians would argue (and I'd like to, but I feel uncomfortable with it), it IS at least sex-neutral; that the convention of using the masculine pronoun is just a random convention. I'm not comfortable with it because I don't buy that. There is no doubt, historically speaking, that when modern English was being developed, women were often considered of little consequence, so if anyone even as recently as, say, the 1950s used the female pronoun in such a construction, they would have been looked at as quite eccentric.
Some people solve the problem this way now, but it immediately jumps off the page to me as contrived and trying too hard. Sorry, but it is still not an acceptable solution. I mean, good writing, whether novels or business memos, should be written clearly and for the purposes of conveying the intended information. If I am shocked off of the page with an urgent curiosity as to whether the writer was a man or a woman (and writers who use the female pronoun are almost invariably men), then it's simply not effective writing.
Another completely unacceptable solution (and I am still guilty of this in speech but I'm pretty good at editing it out of my writing) is mixing singular and plural - "Every student will receive their books at registration.". THIS practice drives me completely up a wall, for obvious reasons (I HOPE they're obvious on this forum).
The solution I try to use is to recast the sentence - "All students will receive their books at registration." When it is easy enough to do, I will do it. Sometimes you write yourself into a corner, though, and it's tough.
What should we do about THAT? Does anyone have a suggeastion for a gender-neutral pronoun? I even have a rule about using it - it is ONLY permitted when the sexes involved are unknown, unknowable, or unimportant. But it would have to be a word that didn't sound too new-age-y or something.
We're not going to be a gender-free language until we manage this little detail. It's the only one I can think of, gender-wise. I have no problem with gender-specific pronouns when the sex is clear - "Every Weselyan student will receive her books at registration."
Any suggestions?

[Alex42]

[Cdaniels]

I'd also suggest looking up "memes," a term coined by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
and also "politcally correct" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politically_correct
I don't think gender-nuetral occupation terms are particularly good examples of Political Correctness, but I'll restrain myself from further opinions

[Henry_Cowell]

A relatively recent PC term from the Bush administration:

climate change (which has now replaced "global warming" in all administration documents, speeches and press briefings)

[Justin Trullinger]

Moving back to the topic of how political correct language enters the lexicon, my idea is that while some self appointed gurus attempt to impose their ideas, as in most cases, the good ideas are the one that stick.


I use "flight attendant" because I can't help but notice that every time I fly, half of'em are men, and "stewards and stewards" sounds awfully stupid. Likewise, I've seen enough women in my dealings with firefighters to know that I would be slighting some people by saying "firemen." It's the words that have a reason for being that last...


Justin