From: bud@mtek.com (Bud Hovell)
Subject: Re: This "PC" stuff
Reply-To: bud@mtek.com
Organization: MTEK International, Inc.
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 21:27:08 GMT

mzener@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes:

>   When there was a wave of Jewish immigrants, did they languish in poverty for
>long?  No.  Italians?  No.  Irish?  No.  Asians?  No.  Hispanic?  We haven't
>had time to tell yet.  Black?  No THERE is another matter.  Why so many poor

Actually, if the Cuban latino community is a reference, we have had time to
tell -- and the answer there is also "no".

>   To claim that English is chauvanistic becuase the male form is the neutered
>form is silly -- you'll note that in every case except when talking about

Silliness is the single most visible hallmark of Pc-ism. Such a claim is
perfectly consistent with its underlying stupid assumptions -- few of which
hold up under close examination.

>people, all our forms are strictly neutral.  In English, every noun is
>neutered.  These other languages you claim to know most likely can't make that
>claim.  If anything, English has gone very far toward entirely removing gender
>from itself!

I would expect to see as a reply from some PC-er:
# Ah, yes, but you see this is really just a plot to make it *appear* to be
# neutral when, in fact, its very attempt at neutrality is proof that it is
# not!

It is worthy of note that in that majority of nations heavily engaged in
production and trade (read: "how wealth is generated"), English is quickly
rising as the de facto common language, owing to its ubiquitousness as a
result of British colonializism and modern anglophon trading dominance, as
well as the combined flexibility and precision that it offers. The author
Joseph Conrad, DWG, was Polish-speaking, and decided to adopt English as his
literary language precisely because of its expressive range and subtlety.
(But then, what did he know?)

Spanish is less difficult to learn, but is also somewhat less precise in
some dimensions of expression, in spite of the fact that it has a very large
base of native-speakers. German is somewhat more technically precise, but
hasn't a large base of native-speakers. And neither has the representation
in world trade relationships to exert strong influence.

Also, English readily adopts foreign expressions to make available the
ability to render new ideas not culturally originating in English. It is,
thus, the diametric opposite of French -- once the official court language
of Europe (including Russia) and now a language rendered as effectively
"dead" as Latin owing to legal restrictions by the government of France
against any dilution of its cultural "purity" by adoption of foreign words.

(Possibly, this policy implements a natural logic that, since the last known
Frenchman to have a new idea died c.1823, any alien word originating outside
of France cannot possibly represent a genuinely *new* idea, else a French-
man would already have thought of it -- and none have. Welcome to Paris.)

If not culturally neutral (an impossibility), English is arguably one of
the most culturally diverse languages in the history of Man. (And we *all*
know how divinely important *diversity* is, don't we, kids?). The really
*curious* fact is that it got that way without the doubtful help of any
spiritual kin of the modern PC-ers.

People adopt other cultural tools because they find them more useful than
the ones they've got -- and this includes language. Oftentimes that added
usefulness *does* have to do with who happens to be dominating the current
spheres of trade (thus politics). There is nothing basically evil in that
fact, and *no* language perfectly expresses everything as well as any other.
No language. The question is whether, on balance, a language better fits
the time and circumstances of the people who are using it. If it does, they
will adopt it, warts and all. Without permission from anyone. Least of all
from the intellectual inheritors of 1960's Haight Ashbury.

Pissing and whining because a language doesn't conform to the same cultural
assumptions as some other language is a moot criticism: it is inherent in
every language that it will contain certain cultural assumptions necessary
to make communication possible without having to explicitly define every
word according to the tastes of some specific individual. It's thus inherent
that in learning to *use* language, one is obliged to understand (and is
expected to rely upon) those conventions. (Try pulling some PC nerdity on
the French, for example, and you'll draw back a bloody stump). And many of
those conventions are *not* cultural biases, but simply conventions to avoid
the cumbersome.

As a specific case, the English use of "him" as a reference to either a male
*or* a female is not an evil cultural disregard of women. It is -- and over
the centuries has been clearly understood by the educated to be -- a simple
convenience.

Just as in referring to a ship as "she", the precisely opposite case. Also
a convention, obviously, since there is no recorded case of a ship having
possesed genitals of either variety. But refer to a ship as either "a boat"
or an "it" around any seaman and you will be roundly criticized on the spot.
Refer to it as a "he" and you may be invited to walk the plank. And verily
no sea[wo]man would ever consider a reference to his/her ship as "she" as
demeaning in any way. [Can you seriously imagine anyone tolerating the time
to communicate in the politically correct style of the last sentence? How
about *speaking* it? Jeesh.].

Or should we all insist that, when referring to a ship, we must always
refer to it as "he/she", just to be sure that no implied prejudice exists?
It is this kind of PC-based ideal that is a burlesque of common sense
sufficiently rotting to gag a maggot.

The PC whirlagig gets attention not based on its merits, but on its utter
stupidity.
-- 
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