PC vs. euphemism

[Alina Israeli]

You are confusing PC and euphemisms. The latter always existed and  
there are dictionaries of euphemisms. PC simply requires one not to  
use offensive language towards minorities. You can still think in  
racial slur in the privacy of your own WC but you are not expected to  
produce it publicly. That's all.

There are PC elements that some older generation people find  
objectionable, such as "his or her" instead of "his" referring to  
some unknown person, and some similar substitutions where the  
reference to ANY person was traditionally in masculine gender. This  
is not English specific. There is a growing number of common gender  
words in Russian and French uses feminine articles with some  
traditionally masculine words, such as ministre. Of course it is not  
without some problems, but the language will sort itself out in a  
generation or two.

On Mar 29, 2008, at 8:14 PM, Dustin Hosseini wrote:

>
> But hey, I suppose PC makes the English language appear more  
> 'beautiful'
> than Russian since we've learned to express certain concepts with  
> several
> more words than necessary; i.e. the lavatory, restroom, W/C (water  
> closet),
> the john, the porcelain goddess (I suppose I should say porcelain  
> god, so
> that the men don't feel left out and the women less offended...)  
> and last
> but not least, the toilet...
>
>

Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387 	
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu




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