Introduction

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction…………………………………………………………………..……3

1. The historical roots of “Political correctness”……………………………...7

3. Aspects of PC language: sensitive topics…………………………..…….11

4. The list of PC language vocabulary……………………………………..19

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...23

List of literature……………………………………………………… ………...24

Introduction

The debates on Political Correctness (PC) provoked a very useful result in the last fifteen years, particularly for magazine and newspaper editors, publishing houses and many authors, famous and less famous, who all have contributed in some way to make it an important subject.

In French, the equivalent term is “ politiquement correct ”; in German – ‘ politisch korrekt ”; in Russian it is rendered by “политкорректность ”, while the Italians call it “politicamente corretto ”. We have a lot of variants for it but they all miss the original meaning, as the term “politic” only refers to politics, and never to language. The connotative element related to the politicization of language is not obvious in Romanian. In an attempt to satirize political correctness exaggerations in language use, the Japanese have chosen a functional type of translation, using the term "kotobagari" (meaning “word hunting”).

It is not possible here to illustrate all the details, also because the phenomenon PC is really a compound of a series of issues not all of which seem to be interconnected.

The topic of this research is how political correctness influences the modern society and how it appeared. One cannot help noticing, that this topic is rather interesting and urgent nowadays. Political correctness, in short, has gone a long way in the past fifteen years. From a minor side effect of society, it has gradually evolved into an overarching, ever-present and omnipotent buzz-word at which everyone shivers. The word is today dominated by an alien system of beliefs, attitudes and values that we have come to know as “Political Correctness.”

The concept of political correctness has been written about extensively over the decades and has been in popular discussion in the U.S. for at least 20 to 30 years.

According to specialists, political correctness - is term which refers to language, ideas, policies or behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in such categories as occupation, gender, race, culture, sexual orientation, disability or age-related contexts.

In other words, to be politically correct means to be hypersensitive to the degree that no one in these categories perceives in any small way that he or she is being singled out, slighted or characterized in any unpleasant or uncomplimentary fashion. It has really picked up steam, becoming far too overbearing. For instance, it is not fair to call fat people fat, we have to call them overweight, horizontally challenged. We can't call short people short, we have to call them vertically challenged. It gets better. We aren't allowed to do certain activities because it is unfair to people. Political correctness has evolved to far more than just this.

The object of the following research is lexical methods of representation political correctness phenomenon in language and investigation the impact of political correctness on everyday speech.

The subject of the research is to find out how political correctness was formed in speech, what favored the development of the phenomenon, what historical events preceded its forthcoming.

The aim of the research is to understand the sense of the phenomenon of PC and to find out the use of it in language and speech; to find the information on what PC language and its historical origin, to create a list of PC language, to present some fitting activities on the subject.

According to the aim of this research we can mark out the following tasks:

1) to describe the political correctness phenomenon;

2) to expose regular occurrence and special characteristics of political correctness; 3) to examine its functioning in language and speech;

4) to compare it with other lexical phenomena and its influence on modern society;

5) to characterize and classify political correctness units.

In this research were used the following research methods:

- a descriptive method that allows to study and systematize the literature on the topic;

- the method of distributive analysis that allows to single out main thematic groups of politically correct vocabulary;

- the method of text analysis;

- the method of qualitative analysis that allows to determine the qualitative ration of politically correct /incorrect vocabulary.

The scientific novelty of course work is based on the following:

- an attempt to determine the status of political correctness and its degree of influence on culture and language;

- conceptualization of historical and national character of political correctness category;

THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF "Political Correctness"

Politically correct speech became a matter of hot debate in the 1980s, when many native speakers of English became sensitive to biased terms and phrases that exist in the language. In the previous decade, activists of the feminist movement made the first attempts to diminish differences between men and women in society. They criticized the existing language and culture as "male-dominated" and "patriarchal." The history of society, as the feminists argued, was written from the male point of view ("it's HIStory, not HERstory").

The English language was also considered to be full of male-dominating patterns. Utterances like Every teacher plans his lessons referred to teachers in general, and words with the stem "man" (e.g. mankind, chairman) were used to denote both sexes. Feminists criticized these items as sexist; all patterns referring to men only were called "sexist, old-fashioned language." Sexist language was opposed by "modern non-sexist or inclusive language" that suggested gender equality and neutrality.

Inclusive language suggested avoiding the use of male pronouns in the cases when the gender of a person is unknown. Utterances like Every student has to pass his exams were replaced by phrases such as All students have to pass their exams or Every student has to pass his or her exams. Today we can even see the phrase Every student has to pass their exams --which violates traditional rules of subject-verb agreement but conforms to new rules of gender neutrality. General terms containing the segment man, such as mankind and man-made, were made inclusive by using synonyms such as humankind and artificial.

Later, the names of jobs and occupations were revised to become sexually neutral. Speakers of English have found new ways to avoid sex markers: flight attendant (since the terms steward and stewardess are no longer used), sales person (salesman and saleswoman have been outlawed), police officer (instead of policeman) and chairperson or chair (instead of chairman).

While getting to know politically correct language, we should clearly differentiate between sexist language, pejorative language and taboo language. Sexist language is a term that labels the use of male-dominated phrases suggesting that members of one sex are less able, intelligent, and skillful (the examples cited above); pejorative language is the use of words or phrases disapproving or suggesting that something is no good or of no importance (labeling nationalities, aged people, etc.); taboo language includes words or phrases which are likely to offend somebody-certain words referring to sex or sexual organs, excretion, and people's nationality or race can be particularly offensive. (Cambridge International Dictionary of English 1995). Avoiding these words and phrases means using politically correct language.

“ In the late 1980s, the rules of political correctness (PC) began to be applied to a broad range of issues-such as race, age, sexual orientation, abilities. As people became sensitive to bias on the basis of race, gender, age, and sexual orientation, they tried to minimize the negative impact of language that reflected these biases”.[ Ruth Perry, 1992, p.71]

The tendency toward "deracialization" in English provided new names for nationalities and ethnic groups. The words Negro, colored, and Afro-American were replaced by African American; Oriental or Asiatic became Asian or more specific designations such as Pacific Islander, Chinese American, Korean. Indian, a term that refers to people who live in or come from India, was differentiated from terms used for the native peoples of North America such as American Indian, Native American, or more specific terms like Chinook or Hopi.

Changing attitudes about aging made people aware of words that reinforce stereotypes (decrepit, senile) and the need to avoid mentioning age unless it's relevant. Terms like elderly, aged, old, and geriatric were replaced by older person, senior citizens or seniors.

New non-pejorative terms began to be used to name people with disabilities or illnesses. Blind people were called visually challenged; the deaf were called people with hearing impairments. The terms challenged, differently abled and special were coined to describe people with clinical diagnoses or mental disabilities. Today these words and word combinations are preferred by some people, but they are often ridiculed and are best avoided.

Politically correct (PC) Language is language that does not unjustly place any group above others, or in short, does not discriminate against any group of people.

Political correctness (PC) is a term used to describe language, ideas, policies, or behavior seen as seeking to minimize offence to gender, racial, cultural, disabled, aged or other identity groups. Conversely, the term “politically incorrect” is used to refer to language or ideas that may cause offence or that are unconstrained by orthodoxy.