Terms Which Have Disappeared

[LizzieMaine]

Generally the people who wail the loudest about "political correctness" are actually just upset that women and minorities are too uppity for their tastes.

As far as corporate euphemisms go, I don't have any use for them as a matter of principle. It's just a load of bourgeois BS designed to blur the true nature of the worker-employer relationship. I'm not an "associate." I'm not a "partner." I'm not a "resource." I'm an employee, a worker, somebody who is paid to do a job. I do the job to the best of my ability, and I cash the paycheck. That's the agreement, and that's the relationship.

Verbing nouns makes my skin crawl.

 

[Fading Fast]

Human Resources is fine as, referenced above, the departments do more than the old "staffing" departments did, but I find that HR departments - and I'm just going to say this - attract (overall, there are exceptions) people who don't have great human interaction skills. They seem to be very bureaucratic minded. When I did find someone in HR who felt genuinely warm and sensitive to people, I tried to keep that person associate with my team as long as I could as they were the rarity. So my problem is that the term does describe what the departments do, they just don't tend to attractive people who have strong human resource skills themselves.

As to names with negative connotations changing over time, I too have noticed this and can understand it in some cases if the name has morphed to have a negative bias, but in other cases it feels as if the new name is some marketing gimmick or "branding" effort to make the same thing sound better which is always easier than improving the actual thing being described. I am not - let me repeat - not referring to the mentally or physically disabled as was sighted earlier - repeat, I am not. A great example is this is that very few people get fired anymore; instead they get laid-off. But this is nonsense, as laid-off used to imply you would be hired back when conditions improved, but today, it is just a nicer sounding way to say you were fired. Others are that at work problems have become challenges and personal weaknesses are individual growth opportunities.

Lastly, as to politically correctness - if it is to remove a truly insensitive word then fine, I'm all for that. But for me, political correctness in the negative sense is when we use a word or phrase or idea to mask the real word or phrase or idea so as to make it more acceptable or to not discuss the real problem at all. Since, I don't want to get into politics (really, really don't), the best example I can think of is the two I used above. Not every problem at work is an exciting challenge, some are simply pain-in-the-neck problems; not all individual weaknesses are simply opportunities that a little more effort or some tutorial will improve - some are personal weaknesses that aren't going away.

 

[tonyb]

Yeah, well, FF, none of us care to be bull****ted.

Love your "exciting challenge" example. How can the average person not be insulted by that sort of thing? If the task is a royal pain in the rump let's just call it that and deal with it because we gotta deal with it. Let's not make it sound worse than it really is, of course, but let's not make it sound better, either. For prettying it up leaves the listener with the impression that the speaker must think s/he is stupid.

 

[tonyb]

Wow, there's some gee-whiz technology. I typed out all the letters in "bull****ted" and all these asterisks showed up. Ain't that some cool ****?

 

[tonyb]

Generally the people who wail the loudest about "political correctness" are actually just upset that women and minorities are too uppity for their tastes. ...

Seems that way, doesn't it?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Wow, there's some gee-whiz technology. I typed out all the letters in "bull****ted" and all these asterisks showed up. Ain't that some cool ****?

You're just not politically correct enough for the Fedora Lounge Man.

What never fails to crack me up about the way certain types swing "political correctness" like a cudgel is that it's basically an old CP-USA term which was appropriated by the right wing radio talk show types in the early '90s. Next thing you know they'll be calling each other "Comrade."

 

[HudsonHawk]

Yeah, well, FF, none of us care to be bull****ted.

Love your "exciting challenge" example. How can the average person not be insulted by that sort of thing? If the task is a royal pain in the rump let's just call it that and deal with it because we gotta deal with it. Let's not make it sound worse than it really is, of course, but let's not make it sound better, either. For prettying it up leaves the listener with the impression that the speaker much think s/he is stupid.

But not everyone finds problems to be a "pain in the rump". Believe it or not, some people actually enjoy solving problems and actually see it as a challenge rather than an insufferable chore. My company calls me when there's a particular type of problem that needs a solution. If I looked at it as "awww, crap, let's just get it over with", I'd be pretty miserable on the job.

 

[tonyb]

And perhaps we're talking apples and oranges.

 

[tonyb]

You're just not politically correct enough for the Fedora Lounge Man.

What never fails to crack me up about the way certain types swing "political correctness" like a cudgel is that it's basically an old CP-USA term which was appropriated by the right wing radio talk show types in the early '90s. Next thing you know they'll be calling each other "Comrade."

Certain perspectives are much more commonly represented around here ("political" topics are banned, although some are clearly more banned than others), as are certain demographic groups.

Me, I'm a third- or fourth- or fifth-generation white American male in late middle age. My "roots" are blue-collar, what I know of them. I suppose I look more or less "ordinary" to most observers. I'm not one to wear my biases on my sleeve, or on my car's bumper, mostly on account of my growing less and less enamored with my own or most anybody else's point of view. So sometimes I'm taken aback by the assumptions -- good, bad or indifferent -- made about me. It gives me a taste of what some people put up with every blessed day.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

You're just not politically correct enough for the Fedora Lounge Man.

What never fails to crack me up about the way certain types swing "political correctness" like a cudgel is that it's basically an old CP-USA term which was appropriated by the right wing radio talk show types in the early '90s. Next thing you know they'll be calling each other "Comrade."

I see no irony here. When the right-wing talk show types use "politically correct" it's a term of derision. What I remember of the the late 1960's radical-speak is that "politically correct" was a term of approbation. So, did the old-school Reds use it in the former or the latter sense?

 

[LizzieMaine]

In the days of Earl Browder, it simply meant that one's public statements were in agreement with the official party line. It didn't necessarily have a positive or negative connotation, it simply meant you were orthodox. That sort of "political correctness" is still an everyday fact of political life in any political party.

 

[Retro Spectator]

What was a yardbird? Also, what does swingaroo mean?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yardbirds were originally chickens, with the term later being applied to newly-imprisoned convicts, and finally, during WWII, the term was applied to incompetent Army recruits. This latter term was popularized by its use in the "Barney Google" comic strip, in which the newly-drafted hillbilly Snuffy Smith was portrayed the classic "yardbird."

 

[tonyb]

Swingaroo is an Australian manufacturer of playground equipment.

 

[Stearmen]

Better to be politically correct than ill-mannered.

That downed on me a couple of years ago! We had political correctness, we simply called it good manners!

 

[Fading Fast]

But not everyone finds problems to be a "pain in the rump". Believe it or not, some people actually enjoy solving problems and actually see it as a challenge rather than an insufferable chore. My company calls me when there's a particular type of problem that needs a solution. If I looked at it as "awww, crap, let's just get it over with", I'd be pretty miserable on the job.

You are absolutely correct that some problems are exciting challenges and opportunities and most jobs have some degree of problem solving to them that can be interesting to work on.

What I am describing is the corporate tick to describe every problem as a great / exciting / interesting / new / different opportunity when some are simply pain-in-the-neck problems. And that's the political correct part of it - when you have an agenda to call, describe, define something in an untruthful way. To wit, Corporate America doesn't want to have problems (people don't like those), so by calling real problems fake exciting opportunities it controls the external message to shareholders - "no problem here at our company" - and the enthusiasm / attitude of its employees - much better to be given an opportunity than a problem.

It's fake, it's driven by an agenda to deceive and it's insulting to those who think through the spin - that to me is the definition of political correctness whether it is done by a company, a politician, an advocacy group or a family member.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's fake, it's driven by an agenda to deceive and it's insulting to those who think through the spin - that to me is the definition of political correctness whether it is done by a company, a politician, an advocacy group or a family member.

I'd describe that more as public relations/ marketing-speak than "political correctness." The entire purpose of that kind of thing is to obscure reality for the benefit of a private agenda: sort of like calling a wave of job cuts a "reverse personnel enhancement." You really can't put that on the same level as what's generally understood as "PC speech" -- for example, calling a cop a "police officer" instead of a "policeman" or "policewoman" deceives no one, obscures nothing, and furthers no hidden agenda.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'd describe that more as public relations/ marketing-speak than "political correctness." The entire purpose of that kind of thing is to obscure reality for the benefit of a private agenda: sort of like calling a wave of job cuts a "reverse personnel enhancement." You really can't put that on the same level as what's generally understood as "PC speech" -- for example, calling a cop a "police officer" instead of a "policeman" or "policewoman" deceives no one, obscures nothing, and furthers no hidden agenda.

I thought the agenda behind the sex-nuetral names like "police officer" or "chairperson" was to remove sexual identity from the title and that it was done to both undo the cultural-bias to thinking of men in certain roles and to further the belief by some that there is no difference between the sexes other than those driven by cultural bias. Whether you think those are admirable goals or not, they are an agenda that not all believe - and the last one is controversial and not always explicitly stated by its advocates (hence, hidden agenda).

 

[LizzieMaine]

No, it's simply a reflection of reality. Both men and women serve as police officers, and have for the better part of the past century, so there's no practical reason for gendering the job title. No hidden agenda at all, except perhaps among those who argue that there *is* one.

The British have the right idea, calling their cops "constables."

 

[HudsonHawk]

It's fake, it's driven by an agenda to deceive and it's insulting to those who think through the spin - that to me is the definition of political correctness whether it is done by a company, a politician, an advocacy group or a family member.

I don't disagree that it can be spin, but I don't see how that can accurately be described as "political correctness".