POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

1
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS THE CASE OF THE VANISHING
TRUST?

• Dr. Irina Perianova,
• University of National and World Economy, Sofia
• inogina_at_yahoo.com

2
Outline

• My presentation focuses on one of the most
  important phenomena of the 20th century-
  political correctness (pc) which may be viewed as
  a communicative code of globalization with its
  denial of centre/periphery relationship and
  hierarchy , its emphasis on a culturally
  pluralistic and interconnected global society
  lacking any single dominant center of political
  power, communication, or intellectual production.
  Due to these core values of globalization pc
  takes on the function of an ethical language. I
  also plan to analyse pc in Bulgaria as
  post-communist discourse.

3
PC and Non-essentialism

• Cultures are ideational entities as such they
  are permeable, susceptible to influence from
  other cultures. Wherever exchange among humans
  occurs, the possibility exists of the influence
  of one culture by another.
• B.Fay. Contemporary Philosophy of Social
  Science A Multicultural Approach, Oxford
  Blackwell (1996 59)

4
Pc and avoidance

• The phenomenon of avoidance is universal though
  the objects of avoidance may differ in different
  languages and in different cultures.
• PC is the product of globalization and is not
  universal

5
Pc examples

• Dutch treat,
• French letter,
• Ten Little Indians/Negroes
• Niggardly,
• my own white hands,
• darling, dear

6
PC as a strategy

• Pc is a strategy used to preserve personal images
  mutually, achieve a respectful symmetry within
  relationships by hiding (revealingly) any real or
  perceived inequality of different variety .

7
Avoidance under socialism

• What is sometimes regarded as socialist pc is no
  such thing it was a language of inequality
  rather than equality and perpetuated difference
  and otherisation

8
PC and Behaviour Codification

• pc should be treated as behaviour codification,
• new commodified language
• It aims to discontinue any form of Otherisation
  (at least on the surface)
• Pc is confined to the following subjects
• race, age, gender, rank, appearance, abilities,
  health (physical and mental
• The ab/users are accused of sexism, chauvinism,
  rankism, ageism.

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Proscribed list

• Dont say Say instead
• A cripple disabled person
• Invalid disabled person
• Handicapped disabled
• Mentally retarded/handicapped person with
  learning difficulties
• Deaf aid hearing aid
• The disabled people with impaired
  mobility/a disability
• Spastic person with cerebral palsy
• Confined to a wheelchair wheel chair user
• wheelchair bound
• Deaf and dumb profoundly deaf
• Disabled toilet accessible toilet
• I. Outhart, L. Taylor , R. Barker, Travel and
  Tourism, Advanced Vocational Training, (London
  Marvell Collins, 2000) p. 340.

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Non-pc objects

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Paternalism and trust

• -Consumer capitalism aims to standardize
  consumption and to shape tastes through
  advertising and new paternalism in which
  experts of all types minister to the needs of the
  lay population
• (Anthony Giddens . Modernity and Self-Identity.
  Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.
  Cambridge Polity Press 1994 172- 174).
• The world is increasingly becoming professional
  (Serge Moscovici), or expert-oriented (Anthony
  Giddens)
• -Expertise and transaction (and
  commodification) are the determinants of the
  modern globalized world
• The new code thus imposed makes the lay minds
  easier to control via the common denominator of
  trust in the expert

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Pc as a language game

• The new missionary EU code ( power dialogue)
  includes pc as a language game.
• Linguistic umpires are monitoring the process of
  what may or may not be said.

13
Trust and Mistrust

• Language games show another facet of trust we
  are guided to use other words by new society
  we are MIStrusted we do not know any better. It
  is we who should trust the new shared discourse
  which reflects standardized and globalized
  language.

14
Trust and Intimacy

• Our situated identities differ in different
  settings, most prominently in public and private
  space. This seems to apply to different societies

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RationaleControlling the environment by language

• Dominant discourse.
• Roland Barthes concept of ex-nomination
  (Mythologies. Editions du Seuil, 1957)
• CAT Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles,
  H. and P.M.Smith (1979) Accommodation Theory
  optimal levels of convergence in Giles, H. and
  R.St Clair (eds.) Language and Social Psychology.
  Oxford Basil Blackwell)
• Attuning and accommodation strategies consist of
  a broad set of linguistic and extra-linguistic
  signals which enable us to adapt our
  communicative acts to those of our partners,
  shifting them along a convergent or divergent
  direction in the sequence of exchange

16
PC in post-communist Bulgaria

• 1)Fewer objects are un/pc
• 2)No (anti)elitism
• 3) No rankism
• 4)Gender pc

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Racial pc in Bulgaria

• ??????? ??? ?????? ?????? - ????????
• ?????? ??????, ??? ?????????
• ???? ??? ?????

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Geographical pc

• ???? ???? (urban vs. rural)
• Sofia other places
• Bulgaria the West
• Aussies Wessies

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Semantic bleaching

• Perlocutionary effect
• The meaning is eroded via its excess
  (Baudrillard )
• MOUTH WIDE SHUT (implicature)

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Indexation, reference representation, icons

• Reference implies inference. Indexing is
  dependent on a context to provide it with
  something to point to.
• Representation (the symbol and the icon) are
  context free
• (Widdowson, H.G. Explorations in Applied
  Linguistics 2, OUP, 1986 150 152)
• From representation to indexation and back

21
Conclusion

• Pc is an essential part of a new grammar of
  communication with its underlying structure of
  wishful thinking a new post-modernist discourse.
  It is polysemic in the Bakhtinian sense it both
  reveals and hides ones ideology simultaneously
  and hence it should be viewed as the Mouth Wide
  Shut phenomenon.
• Through the new pc language we are inventing new
  us (Cf. Eva Hoffman. Lost in Translation 1989 who
  describes how English was inventing her).
• The new communicative competence is yet to be
  acquired by many groups.

22
?

• Have we mastered the new communication
  competence?
• We are learning!
• Some are good students
• Others are -challenged!