Treating Other People With Respect

sir drinks-a-lot said:
Here are a few:

"Nice hat."
"Gee, I really like your pants."
"You really can play the guitar pretty well."
"I admire your approach to things"
etc...

Is that what you were looking for or did I misunderstand the question?
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So why are those statements not PC?
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
Would you call them PC?

What doe think is an example of a PC action?
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So you think a PC is a quality a statement has and that any statement with out this quality is not PC? That seems to be a fairly unique view. That is certainly not what I think of when I think of not being PC.
 
ponderingturtle said:
So you think a PC is a quality a statement has and that any statement with out this quality is not PC? That seems to be a fairly unique view. That is certainly not what I think of when I think of not being PC.
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I would say that PC is a quality a statement can have. It would be circumlocutious and self-consciously careful not to say what the person is actually trying to say.

This is not to say that all people who use for example, xir and xe, are necessarily being PC. For some it's quite natural and they are not self-conscious about it. It becomes PC when the people using the PC words are using them just to avoid social condemnation for the words they'd naturally use, such as she and her.

To me, this quality is what makes a statement PC. It's like lying, but in a more transparently embarrassing way.

"NOT being PC" is using the words that have been deemed bad. The two categories do not form a whole; 99.9% of things people say are neither PC nor NOT PC.

YMMV.
 
ponderingturtle said:
So you think a PC is a quality a statement has and that any statement with out this quality is not PC? That seems to be a fairly unique view. That is certainly not what I think of when I think of not being PC.
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How about the title of Randall Kennedy's book about the n-word (or the statements made by people who said the title while discussing the book)? That's about as politically incorrect as you can get, but it is still respectful. The only thing it doesn't "respect" is the taboo around that word.
 
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Lorentz said:
"NOT being PC" is using the words that have been deemed bad. The two categories do not form a whole; 99.9% of things people say are neither PC nor NOT PC.

YMMV.
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That's how I see it too. Quite like with the word 'moral'. There's moral (PC), there's immoral (not-PC) and then there's the rest (amoral).
 
Lorentz said:
I would say that PC is a quality a statement can have. It would be circumlocutious and self-consciously careful not to say what the person is actually trying to say.

This is not to say that all people who use for example, xir and xe, are necessarily being PC. For some it's quite natural and they are not self-conscious about it. It becomes PC when the people using the PC words are using them just to avoid social condemnation for the words they'd naturally use, such as she and her.

To me, this quality is what makes a statement PC. It's like lying, but in a more transparently embarrassing way.
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Like referring to Bruce Jenner as anything other than the man he is. Is that lying PCness that should be fought against?

"NOT being PC" is using the words that have been deemed bad. The two categories do not form a whole; 99.9% of things people say are neither PC nor NOT PC.

YMMV.
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There are certainly totally neutral statements.
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
Egads! Good luck with that approach, especially in this day and age, and especially if you're a cisgendered, heterosexual, white male in the United States (or on the Internet). You're setting yourself up for a busy year. :)
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And yet, the oft-foretold death of communication does not seem to rear its ugly head, as I am still perfectly able to carry out ordinary conversations with pretty much everybody.

phiwum said:
We can learn that the term means "non-citizen" at Wikipedia, and that it is defined in the British Nationality Act 1981. We can find that it is used in the Australian constitution, though there is some dispute over the meaning of the term.
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Are you somehow labouring under the assumption that all Australians speak Legalese? Whether it is used in the Constitution or not is irrelevant to the average Australian. Most of us (though I do not include myself in this count) haven't even read the Constitution. The exact usage of individual words in the Constitution - a document that was written a hundred years ago - could not possibly be any less relevant.

Look, I'm going to stop here. I've been at this long enough to have expressed my opinion multiple times and in as many different ways I can think of, and I can see that there's just no chance of any of the people who are choosing to argue with me understanding what I'm saying or why I'm saying it. So I'm going to stop subjecting myself to the frustration of trying.

Winners never quit and quitters never win, but those who never win and never quit are idiots. I quit.

Enjoy the rest of the thread.
 
marplots said:
Xe and xir. Do we really need to give grammar Nazis more ammunition?
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Well the OED already added mx. as a gender neutral title.

And those don't really change grammar other than to give more options available. The reversion to including a they as including singular usage would be a larger departure with grammar.
 
arthwollipot said:
and I can see that there's just no chance of any of the people who are choosing to argue with me understanding what I'm saying or why I'm saying it.
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If you propose the problem is us misunderstanding your meaning and intentions, perhaps take your own advice - apologize, and use different words?
 
TeapotCavalry said:
If you propose the problem is us misunderstanding your meaning and intentions, perhaps take your own advice - apologize, and use different words?
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rwguinn said:
You got it backwards. Us not understanding his words is our fault. We must change.
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Another way in which Political Correctness differs from 'treating other people with respect'. The principle of respectfulness is amenable to reason, and people arguing in good faith can arrive at a rational consensus about treating each other respectfully.

But Political Correctness enforces an irrational 'heads I win, tails you lose' relationship: Either you mouth the shibboleths of the in-group, or the in-group rejects you. There is no appeal. There is no room for people of good faith to disagree. There is no allowance for people to reach a mutual understanding in spite of their initial differences in terminology and outlook.

If somebody refuses to discuss the issue of immigration with you, because they object to your use of the term 'illegal immigrant', that is not respect, that is political correctness.
 
arthwollipot said:
Are you somehow labouring under the assumption that all Australians speak Legalese? Whether it is used in the Constitution or not is irrelevant to the average Australian. Most of us (though I do not include myself in this count) haven't even read the Constitution. The exact usage of individual words in the Constitution - a document that was written a hundred years ago - could not possibly be any less relevant.

Look, I'm going to stop here. I've been at this long enough to have expressed my opinion multiple times and in as many different ways I can think of, and I can see that there's just no chance of any of the people who are choosing to argue with me understanding what I'm saying or why I'm saying it. So I'm going to stop subjecting myself to the frustration of trying.

Winners never quit and quitters never win, but those who never win and never quit are idiots. I quit.

Enjoy the rest of the thread.
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Well, sorry that you are frustrated, but I was not disagreeing just to argue or out of stubbornness. On the contrary, I think that your notions regarding words and offense are paternalistic and bizarre. When a term like "alien" has a legitimate, non-pejorative and common meaning, taking offense at its use is irrational, if that common meaning has been made explicit.
 
arthwollipot said:
Look, I'm going to stop here. I've been at this long enough to have expressed my opinion multiple times and in as many different ways I can think of, and I can see that there's just no chance of any of the people who are choosing to argue with me understanding what I'm saying or why I'm saying it.
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I think we've just been othered.
 
theprestige said:
Another way in which Political Correctness differs from 'treating other people with respect'. The principle of respectfulness is amenable to reason, and people arguing in good faith can arrive at a rational consensus about treating each other respectfully.

But Political Correctness enforces an irrational 'heads I win, tails you lose' relationship: Either you mouth the shibboleths of the in-group, or the in-group rejects you. There is no appeal. There is no room for people of good faith to disagree. There is no allowance for people to reach a mutual understanding in spite of their initial differences in terminology and outlook.

If somebody refuses to discuss the issue of immigration with you, because they object to your use of the term 'illegal immigrant', that is not respect, that is political correctness.
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The thing is that most criticisms that people make that people reject as political correctness are things about politeness.

Sure you get people objecting to Black Holes in astronomy because of the term, but they have basically no one else supporting nuts like them.
 
ponderingturtle said:
The thing is that most criticisms that people make that people reject as political correctness are things about politeness.
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I'm not following what you're trying to say. From the start of this thread I've not seen any good examples where "political correctness" can actually be said to be about politeness.

To get to examples, are you saying that U.S. outrage over a Dutch newspaper taking a quote from a book about racism that contains the N-word, is "about politeness"?

Are you saying that rejecting the term "illegal alien" in favour of "undocumented immigrant" is "about politeness"?

Or am I misunderstanding you completely?

p.s. Oddly I do think I understand what Arthwollipot has been saying. I just think he's laughably wrong and that his approach is actively harmful to society.
 
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