There seem to be a lot of people nowadays (particularly a certain type of young man) who take pride in telling people that they are ‘not politically-correct’. What they seem to mean by this is that they are brave, honest people who are willing to speak the truth in the face of great opposition from the powers that be. To be politically correct, they seem to suggest, is an act of cowardice done only to placate authority. Political correctness is the enemy of language because it restricts it to only what is acceptable to say. Politically correct language is lying because the person using it doesn’t have the courage to say what they really mean. Of course, all this is complete rubbish.
Part of the problem, I suspect, comes from the word ‘political’ in the phrase. It invokes the idea of state oppression; a sort of totalitarian world where the government or some other nameless authority has the power to shut down any expression that doesn’t toe the party line.
In the real world, when the government shuts down avenues of expression, we don’t normally use the phrase ‘politically correct’. When state or national governments ban books about Gandhi or Shivaji, when they choose to censor the movies we can watch or the art exhibitions we can go to, we are far more likely to throw around phrases like (depending on which side we are on) ‘hurt sentiments’, ‘freedom of speech’, ‘incitement’, ‘fundamental rights’, etc.
So if it’s not the state, what powerful authority are these people, who claim to be proud of their political incorrectness and defy authority? As far as I can tell it is nothing but the disapproval of those who hear them speak. This can be daunting, true, but in the end all it comes down to is that the people around you will judge you based on the language that you choose to use. Surely this is something most people already know.
And are they really defying public opinion that much? Most of the speech one sees lauded as “politically incorrect” does very little to challenge widely held public opinions and social prejudices. No one suggests that it is politically incorrect to suggest that women are as worthwhile as men — even though our social customs, the gender ratio of births and a number of other factors suggest that most people believe the opposite.
Political correctness implies being aware of, and careful of the language you use; knowing that language has power and choosing to wield that power in the ways that you believe best. ‘Political incorrectness’, as far as I can see, means a refusal to think about the language you inhabit. We live in a country where there is free speech, and people who choose to flaunt their political incorrectness are free to do so
— bluelullaby@gmail.com