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Political correctness a matter of good manners

By Alexander Chancellor
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Wednesday, May 26, 2004, Page 9

`To ask people to stop using words that they consider quite natural and do not consider, or mean to be, offensive is to impose a kind of censorship against which they are bound eventually to rebel.'

"Political correctness" is a tired old expression, not used much nowadays by anybody but the right-wing Daily Mail, which employs it as a weapon with which to castigate the left.

But personally I am rather in favor of it, insofar as it means the avoidance of words and phrases that cause gratuitous offense and make bigotry respectable. Understood in this way, political correctness is just a form of good manners.

It is clearly rude to refer to a black man as a "nigger," so we don't do so unless rudeness is our intention. But there are also subtler forms of insult that might not superficially seem offensive but have become so through association.

There may, for example, be Biblical grounds for referring to the Jews as "the chosen people," but Jews have every reason to suspect that non-Jews who describe them thus are not well-disposed toward them, for the phrase is part of the traditional vocabulary of anti-Semites.

It is, however, difficult to draw the line between what is biased and what is perfectly reasonable, albeit displeasing to some people. And the problem gets worse when you discourage the use of all words that could have negative connotations in people's minds.

Last week the British lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, issued guidelines to judges about how to avoid gender-based, racist or homophobic stereotyping in their use of language. One of his recommendations was that judges should be careful about using the phrase "asylum seeker", because it had become associated with people who did not have a legitimate claim to asylum.

This is surely an example of excessive squeamishness. I don't see how press hysteria about "bogus" asylum seekers can be allowed to discredit the phrase asylum seeker any more than indolence and scrounging among "job seekers" should discredit that expression.

We might as well stop referring to "the young," because some of them are binge drinkers and steal mobile phones, or to "the old," because some of them are decrepit and self-pitying and burdens on their families.

There were other things that surprised me in Woolf's guidance to judges. One was that black was always to be used as an adjective, as in "black person." Is the same rule to be applied to white? It would sound very odd to refer to the minority race in South Africa as "white persons." And, in my experience, black people refer to those of their own color as "blacks" without any hint of self-consciousness.

Judges were also asked to steer clear of the word "businessmen." For a moment I thought that this must have been because of possible connotations of dishonesty or general sleaziness, but it turned out that it was because it suggested sex discrimination.

Under the same heading, judges were asked not to refer to a couple as "man and wife." I can see that that makes the woman sound like a junior partner in the relationship, but should the churches now rewrite the marriage service as well? Should the vicar say: "I now pronounce you married persons?"

The Daily Mail, of course, saw the guidance as a "surrender to political correctness," though in fact it was a well-intentioned effort to prevent judges from using expressions that people could regard as pejorative. This was a worthy objective, and many judges may well need such instruction.

We live in a multicultural society riddled with sensitivities. But if we become too anxious about the words we use, and about how some people might interpret them, communication will become extremely difficult. There aren't many words nowadays that don't have unpleasant connotations -- pub, motorway, speed camera, policeman, estate agent, journalist, politician or, for that matter, judge. Are we to find new words for them all, words that will make them sound cozy and lovable?

Language evolves in accordance with changing attitudes and sensibilities, but it should be allowed to do so gradually. To ask people to stop using words that they consider quite natural and do not consider, or mean to be, offensive is to impose a kind of censorship against which they are bound eventually to rebel.

The chances are that they will then start being offensive just for the sake of it and for the pleasure of using words that they have been told not to use. None of us likes to be pushed around, and at some point we will refuse to put up with it.

It is one thing to draw attention to words or phrases with which people may unwittingly cause offence to some particular group. But it is another thing to try to please everybody all of the time.
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