Political Correctness

Table of contents

1.  INTRODUCTION  2

2.  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND POLITICALLY CORRECT AS TERMS  2

2.1  DEFINITIONS OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS (P C )  2

2.2  ORIGINS USAGE AND MEANING OF THE PHRASES THROUGHOUT THEIR HISTORY  3

3.  PC AS AN IDEA: SOCIO-HISTORICAL SETTING AND CONCEPTS  4

3.1  THE AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT  4

3.2  IDENTITY POLITICS  5

3.3  THE WOMEN S LIBERATION MOVEMENT  5

3.4  GAY AND LESBIAN LIBERATION  6

3.5  STRUGGLES AGAINST THE DISCRIMINATION ON GROUNDS OF AGE AND DISABILITY  7

4  THE BEGINNING OF THE P C DEBATE IN GREAT BRITAIN  7

5.  RESEARCH PART  8

5.1  SOURCES AND METHOD  8

5.2  FINDINGS  9

5.2.1  Newspapers  9

5.2.2  Magazines  9

6.  CONCLUSION  10

  REFERENCES  12

1. Introduction

In this paper I will discuss the concept and the historical origin of political correctness in America and how it managed its way to Great Britain. The discussion will be followed by a section, describing my own research. The main purpose of this investigation is to determine if "political correctness" exists in Great Britain and if there are differences between newspapers and magazines.

2. ‘Political correctness’ and ‘politically correct’ as terms

The terms "political correctness" and "politically correct" are very popular and widely used. This section should provide an overall picture of these terms. After a definition of the two phrases I will give a brief overview of the development of both terms throughout their history.

2.1 Definitions of political correctness (P.C.)

In 1990 and 1991 the political correctness debates started in the USA. These debates received great attention in the media as a series of articles in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the New York Times, Time, the Village Voice, and Atlantic Monthly was written. It was also featured in numerous magazine covers and nationwide talk shows on TV. (c.f. Calhoun 2001: 1337). Due to this great popularity it has been a "'household word' in Anglophone North America since the early 1990" (Auer 2004: 3). Nonetheless it is very hard to define. Schenz (1994: 23) states:

'Political Correctnes' umfaßt ein teilweise wirres Spektrum verschiedener Ideologien, Reformbewegungen und Utopien. Es ist daher schwierig, den Begriff exakt einzugrenzen. Das mag auch der Grund dafür sein, daß bis heute keine allgemein gültige Definition vorliegt. Nur wenige Autoren haben überhaupt den Versuch unternommen, den Begriff genau zu fassen.

The "Collins Cobuild English dictionary for advanced learners" (Sinclair et al 2001: 1186) gives the following definition:

If you say that someone is politically correct, you mean that they are extremely careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society, for example with their attitudes towards sex, race or disability.

The last definition is very pragmatic. It ignores the historical and political connotations of this term, which are of great importance to get a basic understanding of the background of the concept of political correctness. In the next section I will give a short summary of the term's history to provide a more complete picture of "political correctness".

2.2 Origins, usage and meaning of the phrases throughout their history

According to the linguist Deborah Cameron (cf. 1995: 123 - 130) P.C. emerged from a political movement situated on university campuses and from 'alternative' political or cultural institutions, for instance leftist, feminist, anti-racist or green organisations. Because there were reasons not to expose their conversation to the public, all their spoken and most of their written discourse was not mainstream and only "in-group". One theory proposes that the terms came from the Marxist into the Left movement. In this time a politician was politically correct if he/she was behaving according to the party platform. Later the meaning of the term changed and it was only used ironically for politicians who behaved too orthodox (cf. Schenz 1994: 27). Some people believe that the above mentioned meaning change was caused by opponents from outside the party (ibid). Bonder (cf. 1995: 8) states that the word was created by the New Left itself, while Cameron (cf. 1995: 126) notes that it could come from the English translation of "Mao's Little Red Book" or that there could be a connection to "correct lineism", a term used in the Communist Party. Even though the exact, pre-New Left origins of the phrases "politically correct" and "political correctness" remain vague and doubtful, we know that the commonest meaning of these words on the Left was that of a sarcastic mirror-image, which is now often used by the Right to describe them (cf. Cameron 1995: 127). This is also the reason why those people who are said to be advocates of the political correctness movement insist on the fact that such a movement does not exist, because it is only their opponents who use this phrase in that way. (cf. Auer 2004: 15)

The meaning of "political correctness" has been further problematical when the debate has been taken up in the mass media. According to Cameron (cf. 1995: 127) it has experienced a process of "discursive drift". For most people these terms were completely new and they had to deduce it from the context. It is obvious that people will come to different inferences about the meaning of a new term they come across

in the media. As they start to use it in other situations, it begins to drift away from its former (and usually narrower) meaning. (cf. Möller 1999: 34) At present the term P.C. is commonly used completely different than the Left or the Right had used them in the beginning.

The term political correctness itself is very controversial. It is believed that the use of this highly artificial, politically correct terminology separates the affected groups from the others and therefore inhibits integration and acceptance while still propagating stereotypes. This can lead to "new racism" (cf. Schenz 1994: 59-67). Some opponents of P.C. often state that the new terms are cumbersome and awkward substitutes for the original bleak language and have no effect on reality. Changing the language does not eradicate racism or sexism. In their eyes political correctness simply is waste of time and a "shallow 'feel-good' attempt to avoid dealing with real problems in society" (Galloway 1999). The most popular critic was president George Bush, when in May 1991 "he red-baited PCers and multiculturalists as 'political extremists [who] roam the land, abusing the privilege of free speech, setting citizens against one another on the basis of their class or race.'" (Lewis 1995: 90).

3. PC as an idea: socio-historical setting and concepts

The investigation of the origin and history of "political correctness" has shown that its stems are most likely situated in the social movement culture of the late sixties. In the late mid-1980s, then, the term was passed on to the American campus, where the discussion about P.C. concentrated on changing university curricula and on speech codes (cf. Friedman, Narveson 1995: 50-61) (cf. Schenz 1994: 31 - 37 ). In this paper I will concentrate on the interrelation between P.C. and social reform movements in the USA.

3.1 The American Civil Rights movement

The "American Civil Rights movement" is often called the most important social movement of American history. It criticised not only legal discrimination against Afro- Americans, but also verbal racism. In these times condescending names (e.g. nigger) for Afro-Americans were used. King initially favoured negro as an alternative label. In his later speeches he promoted the use of Black, black men and citizens of color. Other terms are Afro-Americans or African Americans (cf. Auer 2004: 27-30).