Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

92 Forbidden Words
supposed that the description politically correct became a kind of in-house
joke, to mock extreme toers of the party line: someone PC was a selfrighteous
ideological bigot. 8 It was intended as a kind of self-mocking irony
in Is that fruit salad politically correct, or has the fruit been picked by
exploited non-unionized labour? But the term was soon co-opted by conservatives,
who stripped it of its ironical element and turned the meaning on its
head, thereby creating a sneer (or snarl) phrase to rubbish left-wing activities
such as affirmative action.
From that time, political correctness started to develop an image problem.
As commentators are quick to point out, the public discourse on what
political correctness means was initiated by sources categorically opposed
to it. The shift from stamp of approval to slogan of opprobrium was striking;
but perhaps also inevitable, given that the term politically correct
would always have had a double edge. Certainly, there would have been
some who used it as a straightforward statement of correctness or ideological
commitment, without any sense of irony. However, bearing in
mind most people’s dislike of extremes and the usual cynicism that
any stiff orthodoxy arouses, it is understandable that the term would eventually
evolve in this way. You could compare the shift in meaning of the
word orthodoxy, which is often a sneer term for the beliefs of others.
The effect of this double edge became a dynamic double-whammy, with
political correctness managing to offend members of both the right and the
left.
The average person, not directly involved in any political subculture,
encountered the term in the popular press. And for the press, which thrives
on steady supplies of sensations and crises, a ‘PC scare’ was most welcome. It
is a fact that the assault on PC-dom was largely media fed. During the 1990s,
hyperboles such as the following were typical of the press coverage:
In an atmosphere fuelled by political correctness, you can now be hanged for uttering
the wrong word. The resulting fear and suspicion engenders an intellectual paralysis
and a drying out of male/female relationships. (The Age, Good Weekend, 11 February
1995)
And so hostility to political correctness grew, fuelled by endless reporting
and re-reporting of stories of over-the-top speech codes, and banning of
books and visual images. It is hard to believe that what speakers of English
call the openings in sewers was ever really of consequence, but there they
were, often in the news as manholes, femholes, person holes, maintenance
hatches, utility holes and personnel access structures. 9 In 1995, the childcare
centre at La Trobe University (Australia) banned the use of about
twenty words which were considered to be offensive (including, curiously,
terms such as girl, boy and even shhhhhh). An offender was made to pay a