Małgorzata Szczerepa
Homo correctus-politicus
seen from a linguistic point of view
For neither man nor angel can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone.
John Milton Paradise Lost
Beyond doubt, we want it or not, in these days we are surrounded by
political correctness (henceforth PC), creeping from every corner of political
and social life. In particular, the products of this phenomenon seem to spring out
from all sorts of mass media (especially the Press, TV and radio), the Internet, as
well as the feminist and linguistic literature. The roots of this phenomenon seem
to go back to the 1960s. The issue of PC appears to be gaining currency in many
European countries, including Poland. Many journalists attempt to take a
definite standpoint towards the problem of political correctness, as well as its
influence upon Polish culture and social life. As far as linguists are concerned,
the issue of political correctness has been taken up by, among others, Pyrkosz
(2002) and Martynuska (2002). Likewise, the Internet pages are flooded by a
number of publications such as, for example, the paper of Koerywo (2002) who
takes an extreme, if not nationalistic, standpoint towards the advocates of
political correctness.
In short, the roots of political correctness go back to American
anthropologist Franz Boas who was one of the proponents of what may be
defined as the white guilt complex1. The so-called white guilt complex was
originally linked to the protests against racist acts of discrimination of American
Indians (PC: Native Americans), whose ancestors’ graves were subject to
scientific excavations. This apparently insignificant issue divided the American
society into two categories, that is, to those who seemed to respect the original
inhabitants of the Continent and those who showed no signs of such respect
whatsoever. The original aim of the proponents of political correctness was to
create a kind of Orwellian New Speak the purpose of which would be to increase
tolerance and respect for those who in some way stick out from the basic core of
the society. As a social and linguistic movement, political correctness first
received publicity in American media in the early 1970s when the National
1
The concept of the white guilt complex is quoted here after Leśniak (2000).
1
Organization for Women proposed a number of changes in language such as, for
example, chair or chairperson instead of chairman, the morphological structure
of which suggests that these are only men who may take chairs, that is highest
positions in presidential bodies, offices, companies, etc. In this way, a number
of new words were coined to support or oppose the rights of women or to
neutralise the terminology immediately connected with the sex and to fill gender
gaps in the vocabulary. With time, language became a tool for feminists to fight
for their rights in this way. Some of the newly created terms, such as, for
example, herstory  as opposed to history  seem to be funny nowadays but at
the time they were coined they were serious attempts to highlight through a
word play the undervalued contribution of women to progress and broadlyunderstood civilisation.
In most general terms, the politically correct language is said to be nonsexist, which in consequence means gender-neutral. Yet, it is worth pointing out
that in politically non-correct language one finds numerous examples of
linguistic prejudice against equal treatment of men and women. This issue may
be exemplified by analysing the semantics of such words as, for example,
bachelor/spinster, governor/governess, lord/lady, king/queen. To visualise this
point, let us quote the definition of each word enumerated above:2
1. bachelor = ‘an unmarried man’,
2. spinster = ‘an unmarried woman, usually one who is no longer young
and/or seems unlikely to marry,
3. governor = ‘a person appointed to govern a province or state, especially a
colony abroad’,
4. governess = ‘a woman employed to teach young children in their home,
and usually living as a member of a household’,
5. king = ‘the male ruler of an independent state, usually inheriting the
position by right of birth’,
6. queen = ‘the female ruler of an independent state, usually inheriting the
position by right of birth’.
7. lord = ‘a male ruler’,
8. lady = ‘woman, especially one of high distinction and noble manners’.
Thus, one may observe that while the meaning of bachelor is not negatively
marked, the semantics of spinster suggests certain evaluation. Similarly, while
the male governor is placed high on the social scale, the meaning of governess
places the word much lover on the evaluative scale. Thirdly, while the primary
meanings of king/queen seem to place them on the same level of social
hierarchy, queen  especially in Amer.Eng. usage  is used in the sense
‘elderly male homosexual’. Likewise, while the meaning of lord may be
2
All definitions have been taken from Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (1995).
2
qualified as solely positive, the semantics of lady has been downgrading in most
recent times, which is testified by the Amer.Eng. use of lady in such contexts as
the following ones:
1. Hey lady, move your car, will you?
2. She is a lady of the night, that’s what she is!
3. The cleaning lady will be coming any minute, so do not lose your time
cleaning up this mess!
As Stapińska (1998) notices, the new phenomenon found first recognition
in revision of words and terms concerning ethnicity or race. According to PC
language, black people should be called African-Americans, whereas the
preferred term for the people of oriental origin should be Asian-Americans.
Likewise, Indians are to be referred to as Native Americans and white
Australians as non-aboriginals. Generally, the word race should be replaced
with ethnic origin and ethnic minority should be substituted by a roundabout
expression culturally different group.
The politically correct phraseology pertains to different spheres of human
life and existence and as such it could be subdivided into different categories.
The first category that somewhat naturally emerges is the class of expressions
concerning physical handicap, which among others includes the following
coinages:
3
mentally handicapped
- people with learning difficulties
- people with learning disabilities
- learning-disabled
physically handicapped
-
confined to a wheelchair
deaf and dumb
suffering from
slow learners
cripple
small/fat
-
physically different
physically challenged
people of different abilities
people of other abilities
wheelchair user
hard of hearing
person who experienced
with special needs
differently abled
differently heighted/sized/weighed3
The examples have been taken from Stapińska (1998) and Martynuska (2002).
3
One gets the impression that although the original intention of the
proponents of political correctness may have been honourable, the trend has
resulted in the introduction of a great number of funny, if that is the word, and
certainly difficult to accept by ordinary language users circumlocutions such as
the following ones:
death
bald
lazy
sado-masochistic
ugly
old
under a dictatorship
broke
cow
short
-
100 percent mortality
hair disadvantaged
motivationally deficient
differently pleasured
aesthetically challenged
chronologically challenged
constitutionally challenged
financially challenged
grain-consuming animal units
vertically challenged4
For a native speaker of Polish who has merely acquired a partial
command of English it might sometimes be difficult to judge whether a given
politically correct expression is adequate or not, or even more so, whether a
given expression may be marked as funny or not. Therefore, it may be difficult
for a Polish native speaker to qualify the expressions listed above. However, this
task does not seem to be so difficult in Polish. While writing this paper an
attempt was made to make a representative list of politically correct expressions
used in the Polish language, as the phenomenon of political correctness appears
to be gaining more and more currency in our country. This number includes the
following words and expressions:
inwalida ( Eng. disabled ) => sprawny inaczej
( lit. able in a different way )
zwolnienia z pracy w górnictwie => restrukturyzacja górnictwa
( Eng. laying off
( lit. the process of restructuring
in the mining industry )
in the mining industry )
sprzątaczka ( Eng. cleaner ) => konserwator powierzchni płaskich
( lit. the cleaner of flat surfaces )
bezdomny ( Eng. homeless ) => przemieszczający się właściciel posiadłości
( lit. itinerant estate owner )
kura domowa ( Eng. housewife ) => inżynier do spraw gospodarstwa
4
The examples have been borrowed from Pyrkosz (2002).
4
domowego ( lit. the engineer looking
after household )
głuchy ( Eng. deaf ) => wizualnie orientowalny ( lit. visually oriented )
slumsy ( Eng. slums ) => strefa ucisku ekonomicznego ( lit. economic
domination zone )
wariat ( Eng. madman ) => percepcyjnie inny ( lit. perceptively different )
ślepy ( Eng. blind ) => fotonowo niereceptywny ( lit. photon non-receptive
man )5
The examples listed above are merely a sample of the body of politically
correct expressions that spring out from our newspapers, radio and television.
However, on the whole they do not seem to catch on either among the young or
the middle-aged users of language, not to mention those who are well beyond
their prime. One gets the feeling that whenever such expressions happen to be
employed they invariably tend to be used with humorous intent in mind.
From a social point of view the PC movement does not appear to solve
any problems. The blind will remain the blind, the homeless will certainly not
return to their homes even if we find a dozen circumlocutions to rename them.
Likewise, the ugly ones will keep on hurting our aesthetic norms as well as the
short ones will not grow even if the whole population starts to use the expression
vertically challenged to name them. It is my belief that PC movement closes
rather than opens minds and, simultaneously, threatens free speech.6 The worst
thing that may be said about it is that PC builds hypocrisy into the minds of the
society. The advocates of PC celebrate “difference”, but they will not allow
people truly to be different  to think differently and say what they think.
Worse still, PC proponents see everything in terms of race, class and gender and
anyone who refuses to see the world through these subjective and often hateful
lenses is branded with a hateful names of racists, bigot or sexist ( on this issue
see Berley (1998) ).
From a purely linguistic point of view the claim that should be made here
is that – in the long run – political correctness seems to have no future either in
English or in any other language. First of all, if we take into consideration the
history of English, which was originally a highly inflective language, we see that
in the last one thousand years or so English has shown a remarkable tendency
towards economy. Similarly, in the present day English there is a great tendency
towards economy, too. This is perfectly visible in the productivity of such wordformation processes as acronyms, clipping, blending and compounding, the
ultimate goal of which is the ease and the economy of communication. Hence, it
remains to be hoped that the PC New Speak craze will soon be perceived as
5
The examples have been taken from Pyrkosz (2002).
Notice that PC may become a poweful source of censorship, a pervasive form of anti-intelectual thought
control and an ugly form of hypocrisy.
6
5
negative language outcome (PC equivalent of linguistic disappearance), as the
result of uncontrolled contact with human reason (PC equivalent of unjustified
by human reason), and we still shall continue to call the spade the spade.
REFERENCES:
Leśniak, A. Moralne aspekty politycznej poprawności. (Radio Maria broadcast,
February 16th, 2000).
Martynuska, M. “ Political Correctness and Bequemlichkeitstreib “ [in:] Studia
Anglica Resoviensia 3. Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego,
2002.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Fifth Edition.
Crowther, J. (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Pyrkosz, D.S “ Down with Grain-consuming Animal Units ! “ [in:] Studia
Anglica Resoviensia 3. Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego,
2002.
Stapińska, M. “ Fenomen political correctness a nauczanie języka angielskiego”
[in:] Biuletyn Glottodydaktyczny Studium Praktycznej Nauki Języków Obcych
Uniwersytetu Jagielońskiego 4. Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka Wydawnictwo
Naukowe, 1998.
INTERNET SOURCES:
Barley, M. (1998) Why ‘Political Correctness’ Cannot Be Correct www.
Political Correctness.htm; 16th March, 2002.
Koerywo, Z. (2002) Polityczna Poprawność www.Polityczna Poprawność.htm;
16th March, 2002.
6