New communications technologies and the expansion of education and tourism have, quite as powerfully as immigration and multiculturalism, increased our exposure to other people's parochialisms and to ideas of civility that differ from our own. The noise of all this difference can no more be kept out of Australian social spaces than words can be stripped of their social power. In a very funny film called Demolition Man , Sylvester Stallone plays a violent, late twentieth century cop thawed out of cryogenic prison by the wimps who pass for cops in a politically correct future. Unable to use the hi tech toilets, Sly murmurs obscenities at one of these machines to get a good supply of paper. Speech codes' is an American term, much less of a mouthful than Australian bureaucracy's 'guidelines for the use of non discriminatory language', but also a lot less accurate for our conditions.
Codes can be compulsory, like road rules.
Guidelines are not. Codes may formalise moral philosophies, guidelines make suggestions for how to get things done. Call them what you will, they are not lists of bad words and they do not turn red blooded men and women vegetarian. Basically, these guidelines give an etiquette for dealing with the complexity of our own society. As a guide to good manners in the midst of diversity it is more experimental, but much simpler, than the etiquettes of old which tried to produce uniformity.