American English today

By Bill Bryson from "Made in America"

Early in 1993, Maryland discovered that it had a problem when someone noticed that the state motto, Fatti maschii, parole femine ("Manly deeds, womanly words"), was not only odd and fatuous (дурацкий), but also sexist. The difficulty was that it was embossed (вытиснен) on a lot of expensive state stationery and engraved on buildings and monuments, and anyway it had been around for a long time. After much debate, the state's legislators hit on an ingenious compromise. Rather than change the motto, they decided to change the translation. Now when Marylanders see Fatti maschii, parole feminie, they are to think, "Strong deeds, gentle words." Everyone went to bed happy.

Would that all issues of sensitivity in language were so easily resolved. In fact, however, almost nothing in recent years has excited more debate or awakened a greater polarity of views than the vaguely all-embracing issue that has come to be known as political correctness. The term was coined in 1975 by Karen DeCrowe, president of the National Organization for Women, but not until about 1990 did it begin to take on an inescapably pejorative (уничижительный) tone. Since that time, newspapers and journals have devoted acres of space to reports that have ranged, for the most part, from the mildly derisive (издевательский) to the openly antagonistic. Some treated the issue as a kind of joke (a typical example: a Newsweek report in 1991 that pondered размышлять whether restaurant customers could expect soon to be brought a womenu by a waitron or waitperson), while others saw it as something much graver (серьезный). Under leading headlines like "The New Ayatollahs" (U.S. News & World Report), "Politically Correct Speech: An Oxymoron" (Editor & Publisher), and "The Word Police" (Library Journal), many publications have assayed (оценивать) the matter with a mixture of outrage and worry.

Most of the arguments distill down to two beliefs: that the English language is being shanghaied by people of linguistically narrow views, threatening one of our most valued constitutional freedoms, and that their verbal creations are burdening us with ludicrously (смехотворно, нелепо) sanitized neologisms that are an embarrassment to civilized discourse (разговор, рассуждение). Two authors, Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf, have made much capital (in the fullest sense of the word) out of these absurdities with their satirical and popular Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook, which offers several hundred examples of absurd euphemisms designed to free the language of the slightest taint of bias. Among the examples they cite: differently hirsute (волосатый) for bald, custody (опека, присмотр) suite for a prison cell, chemically inconvenienced for intoxicated, alternative dentation for false teeth, and stolen nonhuman animal carrier for milkman. What becomes evident only when the reader troubles to scan the notes on sources is that almost all of these excessively cautious terminologies, including those just listed, were made up by the authors themselves.

This might be excused as a bit of harmless, if fundamentally pointless, fun except that these entries have often been picked up by others and transmitted as gospel (евангелие) – for example, in a 1992 article in The Nation, which referred to the "grotesque neologisms" of the political correctness movement and included several examples – involuntarily domiciled for homeless, vocally challenged for mute that never existed before Beard and Cerf concocted (изобретать) them as amusing padding for their curious book.

Most of the genuine examples of contrived neologisms that the authors cite are in fact either justifiable on grounds of sensitivity (developmentally challenged for mentally retarded), widely accepted (date rape, pro-choice), never intended by the creator to be taken seriously (terminological inexactitude for lie), the creations of jargon-loving bodies like sociologists or the military (temporary cessation of hostilities for truce), drawn from secondary sources of uncertain reliability (personipulate for manipulate, taken from another book on political correctness, but not otherwise verified), or become ridiculous only when given a barbed (резкий) definition (suggesting that wildlife management is a common euphemism for "killing, or permitting the hunting, of animals").

What is left after all this are no more than a few – a very few scattered examples of genuine ridiculousness by extremist users of English, mostly from the women's movement and mostly involving the removal of "man" from a variety of common terms – turning manhole into femhole, menstruate into femstruate, and so on.

I don't deny that there is much that is worthy of ridicule in the PC movement – name me a sphere of human activity where there is not – and I shall cite some questionable uses presently, but it seems to me that this is a matter that deserves rather more in the way of thoughtful debate and less in the way of dismissive (равнодушный) harrumphing or feeble jokes about waitrons and womenus. All too often overlooked in discussions of the matter is that at the root of the bias-free language movement lies a commendable (достойный похвалы) sentiment (мнение): to make language less wounding or demeaning (унизительный) to those whose sex, race, physical condition, or circumstances leave them vulnerable to the raw power of words. No reasonable person argues for the general social acceptance of words like nigger, chink, spazz, or fag. But when the argument is carried to a more subtle level, where intolerance or contempt is merely implied, the consensus falls to pieces.

In 1992, U.S. News & World Report in an article headlined "A Political Correctness Roundup (реферат)" noted that "an anti-PC backlash (негативный отклик в прессе) is underway, but there are still plenty of cases of institutionalized silliness." Among the "silliness" that attracted the magazine's attention was the case of students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee being encouraged "to go to a toy store and investigate the availability of racially diverse dolls," and of a New York lawyer being censured (порицать) for calling an adversary (противник) in court "a little lady" and "little mouse."

That students should be encouraged to investigate the availability of racially diverse dolls in a racially diverse society seems to me not the least bit silly. Nor does it seem to me unreasonable that a lawyer should be compelled (заставлять) to treat his courtroom adversaries with a certain measure of respect. (I wonder whether the parties at U.S. News & World Report might have perceived a need for courtesy had the opposing counsel been a male and the words employed been "bub" or "dickhead.") But that, of course, is no more than my opinion, which is the overweening (чрезмерный) problem with any discussion of bias-free usage it is fearfully subjective, a minefield of opinions. What follows are, necessarily and inescapably, mine.

That a subtle and pervasive (распространяющийся) sexual bias exists in English seems to me unarguable. Consider any number of paired sets of words – master / mistress, bachelor / spinster, governor / governess, courtier (придворный) / courtesan – andyou can see in an instant that male words generally denote power and eminence (возвышенность), and that their female counterparts just as generally convey a sense of submissiveness (покорность) or inconsequence (несущественность). That many of the conventions of English usage referring to all humans as mankind, using a male pronoun in constructions like to each his own and everyone has his own view on the matter – show a similar tilt toward the male is also, I think, beyond question. The extent of this is not to be underestimated. As Rosalie Maggio points out in her thoughtful Dictionary of Bias-Free Usage, when Minnesota expunged (вычеркивать) gender-specific language from its law books, it removed 301 feminine references from state statutes, but almost twenty thousand references to men. There is no question that English is historically a male-oriented language.

The difficulty, as many critics of political correctness have pointed out, is that the avoidance of gender-specific constructions contorts the language, flouts (презирать) historical precedent, and deprives us of terms of longstanding utility. People have been using man, mankind, forefathers, founding fathers, a man's home is his castle, and other such expressions for centuries. Why should we stop now?

For two reasons. First, because venerability is no defense. Ninety years ago, moron was an unexceptionable term – indeed, it was a medically precise designation for a particular level of mental acuity (заболевание). Its loose, and eventually cruel, application banished it from polite society in respect for the subnormal. Dozens of other words that were once unselfconsciously (беззастенчиво) bandied (распространять) about – piss, cretin, nigger – nolonger meet the measure of respectability. Just because a word or expression has an antiquity or was once widely used does not confer (накладывать, присваивать) on it some special immunity.

Moreover, such words are often easily replaced. People, humanity, human beings, society, civilization, and many others provide the same service as mankind without ignoring half the populace. Since 1987, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States has used a text, the Revised New Testament of the New American Bible, that is entirely nonsexist. In it, Matthew 4:4 changes from "Not on bread alone is man to live" to "One does not live by bread alone." Matthew 16:23, "You are not judging by God's standards, but by man's," becomes instead "You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do." So seamlessly have these changes been incorporated that I daresay few people reading this version of the New Testament would even notice that it is scrupulously nonsexist. Certainly it has not been deprived of any of its beauty or power.

Unfortunately, there remains in English a large body of gender specific terms – gamesmanship (интриганство), busman's holiday (отпуск, проводимый на работе), manhole, freshman, fisherman, manslaughter, manmade, first baseman, and others beyond counting – that are far less susceptible to modification. Maggio notes that many such "man" words are in fact unexceptionable because their etymology is unconnected to man the male. Manacle, manicure, and manufacture, for example, come from the Latin for hand, and thus are only coincidentally "sexist." Tallboy similarly passes muster (оказаться на высоте) because the closing syllable comes from the French for wood, bois. But in many scores of others the link with gender is explicit and irrefutable.

This poses two problems. First there is the consideration that although many gender-based words do admit of alternatives – mail carrier for mailman, flight attendant for stewardess – formany others the suggested replacements are ambiguous, unfamiliar, or clumsy, and often all three. No matter how you approach them, utility access hole and sewer hole do not offer the immediacy of recognition that manhole does. Gamestership is not a comfortable replacement for gamesmanship. Frosh, frosher, novice, newcomer, greenhorn, tenderfoot, and the other many proposed variants for freshman suffer from either excessive coyness or uncertain comprehensibility.

That is not to say that this must always be so. Twenty years ago, chair for chairman sounded laughable to most people. Ms., if not absurd, was certainly contentious (спорный). Most newspapers adopted it only fitfully and over the protests of white-haired men in visors (забрало, козырек). Today, both appear routinely in publications throughout the English-speaking world and no one thinks anything of it. There is no reason that gamestership and frosh and sewer hole should not equally take up a neutral position in the language. But these things take time. Ms. was coined as far back as 1949, but most people had never heard of it, much less begun to use it, until some twenty years later. Even the seemingly innocuous (безобидный) flight attendant, coined in 1947, wasn't adopted by any airline until 1974 and didn't come into general usage until the late 1970s.

More pertinently (уместно), there is the question of whether such words can always be legitimately termed sexist. Surely the notion that one must investigate a word's etymology before deciding whether it is permissible suggests that there is something inadequate in this approach. I would submit (though I concede that I can sometimes feel the ice shifting beneath my feet) that just as man is not sexist in manipulate or mandible (нижняя челюсть) so it is not in any meaningful sense sexist in manhole or Walkman or gamesmanship.

A word that imparts no overt sense of gender – that doesn't say, "Look, this is a word for guys only" – is effectively neuter. Words, after all, have only the meanings we give them. Piss is infra dig in polite company not because there is something intrinsically shocking in that particular arrangement of letters but because of the associations with which we have endowed (наделять) the word. Surely it is excessive to regard a word as ipso facto objectionable because of the historical background of a syllable embedded in it, particularly when that word does not fire gender-sensitive synapses in most people's minds.

My point becomes somewhat clearer, I hope, when we look at what I think is the greatest weakness of the bias-free usage movement – namely, that often it doesn't know where to stop. The admirable urge to rid the language of its capacity to harm can lead to a zealousness that is little short of patronizing (покровительствовать). Maggio, for instance, cautions us not to "use left-handed metaphorically; it perpetuates (увековечивать) subtle but age-old negative associations for those who are physically left-handed." I would submit that a left-handed person (and I speak as one myself) would have to be sensitive to the point of neurosis to feel personally demeaned by a term like left-handed compliment.

Similarly she cautions against using black in a general sense – black humor, black eye, black mark, blacksmith (though not, oddly, blackout затемнение; обморок) – on the grounds that most black words have a negative connotation that subtly reinforces prejudice. Or as she puts it: "Avoiding words that reinforce negative connotations of black will not do away with racism, but it can lessen the everyday pain these expressions cause readers." I cannot pretend to speak for black people, but it seems to me unlikely that many can have experienced much "everyday pain" from knowing that the person who shoes horses is called a blacksmith.

Even "violent expressions and metaphors" – to kill two birds with one stone, how does that strike you, to knock someone dead, smash hit, one thing triggers another, to kick around an idea – areto be excluded from our speech on the grounds that they help to perpetuate a culture sympathetic to violence.

Such assertions, I would submit, are not only an excessive distraction from the main issues, but dangerously counterproductive. They invite ridicule and, as we have seen, there is no shortage of people who ache to provide it.

A final charge often laid against the bias-free speech movement – that it promotes a bias of its own – is also not always easy to refute. Maggio outlaws many expressions like a man's home is his castle (and rightly in my view) but defends a woman's work is never done on the grounds that "this is particularly true and usually more true than of a man with a paid job and a family." Just because a sentiment is true doesn't make it nonsexist. (And anyway it isn't true.) Others take matters much further. When the University of Hawaii proposed a speech code for students and staff, Mari Matsuda, a professor of law, endorsed the idea but added the truly arresting belief "Hateful verbal attacks upon dominant group members by victims is permissible."

With respect, I would suggest that consideration, reasonableness, and a sense of fairness are qualities that apply to all members of a speech community, not just to those who hold the reins.

Discussion

Вспомнить Гоголя (цитаты).

PC: politeness / equality / stresses differences / hate, offense / artificial

PC: terminology / language / conception / phenomenon / society

Who is insulted? Who is protected by PC?

Taking the problem to extremes is demeaning the problem.

Give a description of PC.

Make a (priority) list of groups subjected to PC.

Give examples of PC – this country / other countries.

Prognosis: PC development in America / in this country.

Translate the examples. Give your own.

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