Political Correctness in Russia

[Josh Wilson]

Interesting observations, all. 

I've always gotten the impression that Russians feel PC has no place in
their society largely because PC assumes that language in large part forms
reality. Maybe because Russians have long had reason to believe that reality
and descriptions of reality are separate entities, PC is considered perhaps
as silly in Russia as the "sit on concrete and become infertile" belief is
in the West.

That said, just a couple of anecdotal additions to Dustin's observation: 

My Russian wife considers referring to a person as "tolstiy", even when not
in their presence, to be horribly rude. She has trained me to use the word
"krugliy" instead - which I personally consider ridiculous but which she
thinks is most acceptable. 

On ethnicity, I recently saw on the Russian version of the "Family Feud"
game show, two contestants interact. They had competed together in the last
Olympic games and were now on the same game show team. One, a white Russian
male, referred to the other, a very ethnic looking Armenian female as
"chistaya armyanka." The reference was supposed to be a joke referring to
the fact that she supposedly was always thinking of money and riches. She
didn't say anything, but I gathered from the look on her face that she was
embarrassed by this and certainly not amused. Nobody else (all white
Russians) flinched.

Just a couple of days ago I heard a Russian on the street refer to the new
American president with a term similar to "chernomaz," but much worse and
referring to another part of the body. I'll spare you all the actual term.
Of course, I'm sure that a direct translation of the term and/or many things
just as bad have been used in many places in the US and not every man on the
street is particularly a "man on the street" anywhere... but interesting. 

Just a few other thoughts... 



Josh Wilson
Asst. Director
The School of Russian and Asian Studies
Editor-in-Chief
Vestnik, The Journal of Russian and Asian Studies
www.sras.org
jwilson at sras.org

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
[mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Dustin Hosseini
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:26 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Political Correctness in Russia

Perhaps PC has a role in Russia, but in other ways... that is, it exists in
certain spheres while it is nonexistent in other areas.    

For example, you couldn't, without being offensive, say someone is 'tolstiy'
[fat] but you could perhaps say that someone is 'polniy' or 'pol'nenkiy'
[lit. chubby/plump?].  

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