TimeSeeker wrote: ↑Fri Sep 14, 2018 11:36 am
Unless you have made an error in reasoning.
Let's see what it would be.
My identity does not hinge on words or definitions. I am comfortable not having a label for myself beyond "human". I also recognise that it took me a long time to realize the importance language played. The only tool we have to define ourselves in IS language!
Well, my background is very heavy on linguistics, among other things. So it didn't take me much time at all to realize how important it was. It's very impressive, yes -- but for that reason, also easy to overestimate. "Language all we have" is not a
carte-blanche claim that stands up well to some of the basic facts.
And so imagine what would happen if I were to apply deconstruction to a word/quality/behavior you fundamentally identify with - you will probably get "triggered" and start defending the word's "true/actual meaning". Even though you know damn well that words have no objective meaning.
Actually, I really know no such thing; in fact, I can very easily show it's not true.
My proof goes like this: I believe that, with some justification, you are expecting me to read your words carefully, and interpret them courteously and well. Is that not true?
But how can I interpret well and with courtesy when your words "have no objective meaning"?
How can I ever be "discourteous," when such words can have no definite meaning?
Clearly you expect that they do -- or else you would not have any reason to bother to utter them in the first place. I don't, in all courtesy, take you for a man who's just "gassing." But if you're trying to say something, and believing you're going to communicate it to me or anyone else, you have to have some meaning behind your words, don't you?
So the realization that language is flexible can tip over -- in cases of those first struck with it -- into a belief that language is INFINITELY flexible...which it clearly is not, or it would cease to have any language-function at all.
And so - consider that me CHOOSING to be PC is me CHOOSING not to rob you of your language.
You can indeed "choose" to be PC. But PC'ers are actually the WORST at robbing people of language. If you read Orwell's
1984, you know how this works -- propaganda, not courteous or charitable language, is the stock-in-trade of the Left, and also of the extreme wing of the Right.
To be Politically Correct is different from being
factually correct. It means to let "politics," not truth, drive ones utterances. On the flip side, to be Politically Incorrect may mean no more than to be gratuitously offensive -- but it may also mean to let truthfulness, not political currency, determine the content of your utterances. My suggestion is that we should choose to let the truth -- however well we know it -- rule and guide our utterances, as I believe (from your own practice above) you would too.
Because language is all you have.
It isn't. But it's a really, really important thing.