If you want a carcrash analogy it’s less like physical injury and more like wearing a neck-brace for a couple of weeks while your ambulance-chasing lawyer sues for ‘suspected’ whiplash.

I think you’re conflating two different sorts of offensive language, that don’t really have a lot in common other than being offensive – in fact, they’re almost opposites.

There’s the use of aspects of a person (gender, race, sexuality, appearance, disability or illness, etc.) as insults, which comes from and reinforces a range of negative stereotypes, and which a fair number (not all, but certainly enough) of the people with those particular aspects find insulting, offensive or threatening. I don’t yet see any defence of those that doesn’t ultimately come down to one of “I don’t personally find it insulting (so you shouldn’t)”, “My [black/female/gay/etc] friend doesn’t have a problem with it (so you shouldn’t)”, or “I don’t think [racism/ableism/etc] is a problem”.

Carlin’s “it’s all about intent” defence, to which you subscribe, is rather clearly wrong. It is rare the intent of a person causing harm to be considered significant when accounting for whether harm was caused (though it is often considered significant in determining what the appropriate compensation is).

For examples: causing death by dangerous driving and murder are different offences, but they’re both still offences, and “I didn’t intend to kill anyone, and you have to look at the context in which I was driving, and look at all these people I didn’t kill who weren’t harmed by it at all” has never been a successful defence. At the other end of the scale, if I’m helping you with DIY and hit your thumb with the hammer, I apologise for doing so _because_ I had no intent to do so but your thumb’s still going to have a nasty bruise either way, and I don’t have any right to complain about your shouted grievances about my hammer-swinging skills, my commitment to the project, and my care for your personal safety.

“That’s where the dogma of ‘political correctness’ too often gets it completely wrong. It tries to change attitudes by making rules, giving people banal lists of words that they supposedly can’t use in any circumstances because the words themselves are ‘offensive’.”

This is entirely backwards, of course: it may well often be badly taught – I’ve sat through useless diversity courses myself – but the point is that if you want to be “not racist” then part of that is “not sounding like you’re racist”. It’s not that if you don’t use these words you’ll magically stop being racist – it’s that if you don’t stop using these words you’ll be indistinguishable in certain contexts from someone who is being intentionally racist. (Using Mongol to refer to the historic group is not, of course, one of those contexts, but using an example of a bad training course doesn’t invalidate the larger point, any more than me finding a bad example from a health and safety course can condone smoking around the oxygen cylinders)

Essentially, this sort of language is the use of insults to attach negative connotations to things which shouldn’t have them, or to use an existing unwanted negative connotation as an insult.

Then there’s the use of euphemisms to remove negative connotations from things that really deserve them, such as “collateral damage”, or to use unwanted positive connotations (e.g. “friendly fire”) to obscure. That is also offensive, and deserves far more complaint than it currently gets, but is essentially the opposite of the first type. If you wanted to complain about that, that half of the argument would stand well on its own.

(On the shell shock -> PTSD example, one advantage of PTSD that isn’t shared by the other euphemisms in that progression is that it makes clear that this can be caused by stress other than combat, which may actually be helping treatment and recognition of civilian and peacetime people with PTSD, who probably make up the majority of the UK and US cases.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/07/offensive-shazia-mirza

And yes, if you’re using a word in its correct context, even if as part of an insult, then no-one should be stopping you from using it, nor is it “wrong” in the context of the discussion started by Unity to do so.

It is, in that circumstance, the fact the speaker wished to use it as an insult that is the problem (and is a direct reflection on their own prejudices), not the use of the word in itself. No-one who’s autistic, or cares for autistic people (or knows them, or whatever) should be throwing toys out of their pram for someone using the term correctly, more that the individual seems to think that being autistic in manner is something worthy of being insulted for. It is the individual that is the problem, not the word.

I participated in a debate at the Cambridge Union a couple of weeks ago, defending political correctness against Ann Widdecombe. I made the point about the importance of history and context, but also argued that respect for the name people choose for themselves is important too.

Where do you draw the line with this kind of criticism, however? On the mental health side, Guido Fawkes regularly refers to McBroon as “the Prime Mentalist”. Is that offensive to people who have had mental health problems? I’ve had some in the past and I don’t take any offence from it whatsoever. It’s just Guido keeping in with his tabloid-esque style of blogging.

I think your on a wind-up and I don’t have the time for this rubbish.

But we have to use our common sense. Yes, using Autistic at the end of a descriptor of someone is clearly intended to use the word as an insult, but no-one is claiming that people should be able to get away with that. Saying someone actually has signs of autism, even as an “insult” may show that person’s prejudices but also is perfectly acceptable as a truthful statement.

We do only have words on the internet, which is why I believe we ultimately end up fighting more with each other. I think we’re all as guilty as each other, but ultimately we should stop “taking people at their word” online and start asking them about their meaning. I think we’d all be surprised how often we’re putting meanings in to other people’s words without warrant.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by libcon: :: Offensive Language? http://bit.ly/1svpSq...

Nonetheless, use of a lot of these words does often indicate prejudice, and especially on the internet – where all we have is words – it’s often useful to pick up on them to point out prejudice. In particular it seems wrong to use the word “autistic” as an insult, given that it’s widely used in a purely descriptive way.

I’m not particularly convinced by Shatterface’s point about not being able to use “retard” putting him at a rhetorical disadvantage. There are enough words to go round, especially if your argument is strong enough.

Anyone would have to be blind not to see that.

And if they disagree they don’t have a leg to stand on.

Incidentally, though Orwell’s Newspeak is meant to make certain thoughts literally unthinkable he does include the get-out clause ‘at least so far as thought is dependant on words’. For all the linguistic deremination of Foucault or Wittgenstein, most actual thought is extra-linguistic. The wag who changed some local graffiti from ‘All queers must die!’ to ‘All gays must die!’ understood that at some basic level.

Back to ‘retard’: this has a specific, if archaic, definition but then so do ‘idiot’, ‘cretin’, etc. If you ban all language based on measures of intelligence (as with mental illness) then you effectively restrict yourself to synonyms of ‘wrong’ when you argue with someone, putting yourself at a rhetorical disadvantage.

Euphemisms are the worst. ‘Collateral damage’, ‘rendition’, etc. Orwell wrote the definitive essay on the subject and I’ll assume no-one has never had the time to read it. It’s short, so no excuses.

God, I hate ‘special’ though. That’s really the worst word to use, such a fucking patronising word for someone with ‘special needs’. I almost puked when I heard the mother in ‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ say to her child ‘Remember when I said our 1940′s eye-rolling black stereotype of a gardner is ‘special’?’ (or words to that effect).

Dysphemisms are often overlooked, I think. When a newspaper magnate or banker is described as a Jew the speaker is often not merely commenting on their religion (which is usually irrelevant) but reducing that person to a type; likewise if you are describing someone as a prick or ‘the appendix in bed four’ you are reducing them t’i a body part through synechdoche. In both cases you are denying someone their humanity.