What?s in a name? The marks of power and prejudice, proponents of politically-correct (PC) language will answer. Labels are not only used to describe people but can trap them into boxes and reinforce discrimination.
There is surely some merit in this argument. Only the most na?ve can be blind to the racial hatred in the word nigger or Paki or to the hostility explicit in the word ?queer.? That we now use the term black or people of colour for the first insult is a hard-won achievement of the Black movement in America.
The increasing currency of the word ?sex worker? for prostitute is an index of a rethinking of sexual mores currently on. Crippled is not a neutral term of description but one that slams the door on the thought of the physically challenged leading normal lives. Calling a gaggle of women scribes ?newsmen? is more than irritating ? it?s the refusal to accept that the media is no male bastion. Tinkering with language can make us question the biases that creep into everyday use of words and stop us from stereotyping people because of their differences.
Fair enough. But people across the world are increasingly tiring of the vigilantism of the PC brigade, which insists on scanning words for alleged discriminatory associations. Thus people are exhorted to call the blind ?visually impaired? and the deaf ?aurally impaired? to avoid dredging up unpleasant associations.
If you stand at a modest five feet or less, you are ?vertically challenged? or ?of different stature?. There are more outrageous euphemisms; ?aesthetically challenged? for ugly and ?socially misaligned? for a psychopath! A crook, forgive him, poor soul, is only ethically challenged.
At work here is nothing more exalted than an allergy to embarrassment. Worse, in some cases, the effect is the opposite.
One argument to be made is that a sensitive language is not acknowledgement or guarantee enough for the rights of the blind or the disabled. But there?s more. Replacing the blind with visually impaired suggests there is something to apologise in the notion of blindness.
Many organisations for the blind have pointed out that the lack of vision is among the many other constraining factors for the blind and not a distasteful fact that needs to be glossed over by an antiseptic term like visually challenged. There is also a disturbing parallel between politically correct language and the language of propaganda.
When the US administration shoves the thousands of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan under the term ?collateral damage?, it?s twisting language to obscure and efface reality.
What we have when we do not call a spade a spade is a disinfected language that only succeeds in avoiding the impolite and shrugging off responsibility.
