Sunday, June 12, 2011

Hard To Keep Up With the New Crunchy Delicious PC Lingo

Did you know that  the word "streetperson" (to refer to someone of no fixed address who beds down al fresco) is a perjorative and therefore to be avoided at all costs? No? Neither did I until I read this corrective by Kathy English, the Toronto Star's arbiter of all language PC.

Reminds me of the time some wag (okay, it was me) suggested the politically correct term for gingerbread man: a person of ginger.

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2 comments:

  1. Carlos PereraJune 12, 2011 at 10:21 AM

    Actually, "streetperson" emerged in the late 1960s as a euphemism for _bum_. I remember well the strong exhortations from activist and news media _bien pensants_ to employ the former word instead of the latter. That's the problem with euphemisms, they inevitably take on all of the unfavorable connotations of the term they displace.

    As I think I have mentioned before in these comments, I am a physical therapist in a Northeast Florida school system. We are constantly beset with directives to employ the newest euphemism to replace the existing one, which in turn replaced an older one . . . in what seems like an interminable and useless semantic chain. For instance, we have been directed recently no to use the term _autism_ to refer to . . . well, what ails autistic children. The new, politically correct term is _communications and social skills disorder_ (To my ear, that actually sounds a lot more pejorative than the more coldly clinical _autism_, with its "medical Greek" root.) The whole process would be somewhat amusing, if not for its Orwellian newspeak overtones.

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  2. Tim JohnstonJune 12, 2011 at 8:42 PM

    see, even the euphemisms have to have euphemisms!

    I like how "streetperson" is considered "dehumanizing", even though it has the word 'person' in it. duh..

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