Departmental Seminar: Dr Graham Stevens (Manchester

Dates:	6 February 2019
Times:	15:00 - 17:00
What is it:	Seminar
Organiser:	School of Social Sciences

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Title

Politically Correct Semantics

Abstract

This paper is not, as its title could be mistakenly understood to suggest, an attempt to do semantic theory in a way that is “politically correct”. Rather my interest is in investigating the semantic features of a range of linguistic expressions and proposed linguistic reforms that are often labelled “politically correct” (PC). This expression is usually used as a pejorative term for such devices by those who object to them. If you have the stomach for it, you can read The Daily Mail and will very quickly discover outraged objections to PC reforms. What is this thing that is being so strongly objected to? Within the confines of language (the term PC is often used to cover non-linguistic reforms that will not be discussed here), I suggest that PC language reforms are a puzzling mixture of coercive constraints on what it is acceptable to say, and a non-revisionary stance on what we say. It is supposed to force speakers into changing what that the say by merely making them say it in a different way. But, of course, to say something in a different way is still to say or mean the same thing, in which case this would seem to ensure that PC reforms do not reform the things that we say or mean. I consider 4 ways to understand this situation: (1) the coercive aspects of PC reforms are non-semantic; (2) PC reforms really do change semantic content; (3) PC reforms are a pragmatic operation akin to euphemism; (4) PC reforms operate on non-truth-conditional semantic meaning. I argue that (4) is the correct analysis of, at least, a great deal of what is referred to as “political correctness”. Please note that the nature of this topic makes it impossible to avoid some examples involving sexual innuendo, derogatory epithets, coarse language, etc., however, these will not be gratuitously discussed.

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2.16/17
Arthur Lewis Building
Manchester

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Dr Paula Satne

paula.satne@manchester.ac.uk