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January 7, 2003
Last edit: October 9, 2003
A corollary of the "language is thought"
doctrine is the notion that you can
eliminate unenlightened thinking by
elimiating words with unenlightened
connotations.
(This is one of the main
things people complain
about under the heading CORRECT
"political correctness".)
A popular doctrine because:
(1) it gives you something easy to attack.
(2) having anything to complain
about publically helps call
attention to a cause.
(3) humanities-types care a lot
about words, and like the idea
that they're powerful.
(4) re-emergence of belief in
word magic incantations.
Despite buying into the EXCEPTION
language = thought
doctrine, they missed
the point that Korzybski
made:
"The map is not the territory,
the word is not the thing itself."
It's interesting how
often this manuever
totally fails: the
old connotations chase
the new term.
An excellent example
is the creation (IHCOYC XPICTOC of
of the euphemism alt.gothic reminded
"special" in place of me of this one.)
"retarded"... with the
immediate result that
"special" became an
insult among all school
children with
connotations exactly
like the word it was
supposed to replace.
The one that I like though:
Once upon a time, we called all
pre-menopause human females
"girls". In contrast all
sexually active males were just
"men".
Then there was a push to
use word "woman" for
adult females. It was
largely successful, at
least in print.
But if you actually listen to the
way people talk, in casual language Now: another peculiarity
it's not "men and women", it's more of "standard" english was
like "guys and girls". that the third person
masculine was also used in
the general case:
"Suppose someone wrote
a program, and he did
it like this."
Then there was that
push to insist on
Again, this was spelling out "he or
largely successful, she" in the general
at least in case.
print usage.
This issue really
But once again, listen to people bothered me at one
talk... what they often do is point. I thought
press the *plural* into service the "his or hers"
in the singular case: "Suppose language was too
someone wrote a program, and they clumsy, and technically
did it like this." unnecessary if you
understood the rules
And what often happens, is of standard english.
that everyone uses "guy"
as the informal third person I favored sticking
general pronoun: with the standard
over non-standard
"Suppose some guy tweaks.
wrote some
code like this." I gave up on this
crusade when I
realized that in
this case the
So the crusades of language police had
the language police really suceeded:
have had limited they changed the
success in written standard.
formal usage, but
other forms keep To the extent
popping up in the that there *is*
informal use. a standard for
english, clearly
the third person
There's some odd general rules
cultural need for are different now.
the second sex to
be thought of second? And also hardly
anyone was
really using
And it doesn't the "official"
just disapear rules: ergo
if you attack they didn't
the symptoms. really exist.
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