Political Correctness Flashcards
Kay and Kempton (1984) - determinism.
Studied a Mexican language and found that it had one word for blue and green. Suggested that this meant that English people were better at distinguishing shades.
Linguistic determinism - the basis of PC language.
Language influences the way in which we conceptualise our world - e.g. language, to some extent, influences the way we think.
Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932) - determinism.
Suggested that language can affect memory. A stimulus drawing was shown to participants in a study. When reproduced, it depended on what the picture was named, how they reproduced it.
Loftus (1974) - determinism.
Participants were shown a clip of a car crash. When asked about the speed at which the car was travelling, those who were asked about the speed at which the car ‘smashed’ believed it was going faster than those who were asked the speed at which it ‘hit’ or ‘contacted’.
Swift and Miller.
One of the ‘androcentric’ derived problems with English is that there is no gender neutral third person singular pronoun. Instead, ‘he’ was often used - referred to as the ‘generic he’.
Dale Spender (1980).
English is inherently male dominated. She observed that ‘male’ is accepted as the norm. She continues that women traditionally occupy a negative social space and this has led to words representing women occupying a negative semantic space.
What three things did Spender highlight?
Order of precedence - certain expressions feel ‘naturally’ right in a certain order. Lexical asymmetry - terms for men and women are not symmetrically organised. Semantic derogation - neutral term that gradually develops negative connotations.
Reflectionism.
Language simply reflects the way in which we view the world. Change attitudes to change language. They see PC as futile.
Pinker (2003).
Coined the term ‘euphemism treadmill’ whereby words introduced to replace an offensive word, over time become offensive themselves - e.g. retard.
