Category talk:Politically correct terms by language

RFDO discussion: June 2016–March 2017

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Category:Politically correct terms by language

All of the entries in this category could just as easily be categorized as euphemisms, without using the inherently biased term "politically correct", which means nearly nothing. Categorizing terms in other languages than English as "politically correct" seems especially suspect. I think we could have a category for something like "proscribed gender neutral terms", but politically correct has come to have so much baggage I don't see how we can keep it. DTLHS (talk) 01:32, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

I think it might be better to go by the difference in the type of taboo: these are basically the result of political taboos, as opposed to taboos about death/disease, sex/bodily functions, religion/the supernatural, etc. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:12, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

• Delete per DTLHS. Just having the category invites bias. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:06, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

  I like Chuck's suggestion. "Politically correct" has proven hard to define in a way that doesn't offend. It is itself neither politically correct nor neutral. Taboos about 'disadvantaged' groups, such as, in the US, the poor, blacks, Latinos, women, members of the LGBT community, homeless, first peoples, debtors, people with disabilities, (religious) believers, etc make it hard to even discuss the matter, especially with examples.

I think we are under some obligation to handle these matters responsibly and accurately. That a large number of folks find some coherence to the PC concept, however ineffable, suggests that there is a real phenomenon. That it has lexical implications is also obvious. — This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs).

I agree with DCDuring. Political correctness/incorrectness involves word choice and therefore should be handled by a dictionary. Purplebackpack89 13:13, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

• Delete per DTLHS. What is or isn't 'politically correct' seems far too open to interpretation and enables political soapboxing on Wiktionary. — Kleio (t · c) 19:57, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Interesting one. Most of the words seem to be gender-neutral terms that aren't widely accepted and would sound odd (e.g. milkperson — though we don't have it yet), as opposed to widely accepted GN terms like firefighter and chairperson. That does require glossing, but "rare" might be good enough (or, for some of the non-gendered terms like underresourced for "poor", "euphemism"). I think that deleting the category outright, and leaving these "odd" words unglossed, would be a mistake. Remember that people learn from us and generally expect to learn some degree of standard or universal English. Equinox ◑ 20:12, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

• keep. How does this invite bias but euphemism and euphemisms do not? PCs are euphemisms that are devised for a specific reason of having one's speech not be offensive to anyone (regardless of how dumb the end result may be). This is how I sees them.Dixtosa (talk) 20:48, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Here in the US the words "politically correct" / "politically incorrect" are basically only used by racists and homophobes. That's why it invites bias. DTLHS (talk) 21:03, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

And also because of comments like that. --WikiTiki89 21:05, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Gee, I didn't know I was a racist homophobe; I thought I was just too old for this kind of thing; but one learns something new every day.

I don't like the category name and doubt that there is another one that would both both communicative and well-defined enough to be reliably and uncontroversially implemented. Category:Gender-neutral terms and Category:Non-offensive terms for socio-ethnic groups seem to me to be examples of less troublesome titles, though the second is too long. We might also have Category:Organizational euphemisms. Some of these may work better as appendices with {{only used in}} redirects. DCDuring TALK 21:23, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

I have created and populated Category:English gender-neutral terms and more terms are being added to it. This includes most of the members of the category under challenge. Many of the others use challenged.

The addition of a term like waiter and actor raises questions in my mind of how to treat terms that have been gender-specific, but have long been used in a gender-neutral way, despite objections, and despite efforts to substitute a term like server (for waiter/waitress). DCDuring TALK 22:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, there does seem to be some kind of objective difference between "terms that were always gender-neutral" and "terms that became gender-neutral at some point" (chairman, alderman?); the latter group could be subdivided into "terms that previously had a feminine form" (chairwoman) and "things that women previously just weren't allowed to do" (doctor?). Whew. Equinox ◑ 22:45, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

"Politically correct" is a loaded (POV) term which is used mostly (though not entirely) by those in the right wing. It is a magnet for political soapboxing, as Kleio notes, and as can already be seen from the entries that have been placed into it, such as "African American". Perhaps there are some who view "African American" as "politically correct" and prefer an older term (there were some in Sweden recently complaining that "you can't call things by their names anymore" because you are expected to call chocolate balls "chokladbollar" instead of "negerbollar"), but to more people I expect "African American" is just a regular phrase, so it doesn't AFAICS belong in the category, nor does "Ms" or "sex worker" (which is just descriptive) or several other terms. And "ethically challenged" is jocular, not "politically correct". Delete, IMO, but if the category is kept it needs to be renamed to a more descriptive name, and pruned. - -sche (discuss) 09:58, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Following the advice above to not simply remove the label but switch to more specific (and less subjective and derogatory) labels, I recategorized the roughly 90 mostly-English entries that used this label. They were a hodgepodge of euphemisms, jocular coinages, nonstandard forms, and ordinary everyday words, and have now been relabelled with those various labels. I see that others have already created a "gender-neutral" category for the "-person" terms (some are very common, others are very rare). - -sche (discuss) 09:39, 21 March 2017 (UTC)