The Limits of PC Discourse: Linking Language Use to Social Practice
| Autor: | Marlia E. Banning |
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| Rok vydání: | 2004 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Pedagogy. 4:191-214 |
| ISSN: | 1533-6255 1531-4200 |
| DOI: | 10.1215/15314200-4-2-191 |
| Popis: | References to political correctness (PC) are so common that it is difficult to get through a day without hearing or reading the term.1 It is typically used without elaboration and with a familiarity implying that it refers to something that the speaker and listeners already know well—it inhabits the space of common sense. Yet it has been only in the last decade or so that the discourse of political correctness has gained momentum and a kind of canonical status, crossing from countercultural to mainstream use and increasingly making appearances in the university arena. The term is regularly deployed in the upper-division writing courses that I teach, in which I ask students to critically examine contemporary issues introduced by a wide variety of practical, popular, and persuasive texts. Course materials draw attention to the routine practices of assent and dissent in debates of public interest, to the ways power is enacted in U.S. society and across nations, and, more broadly, to questions of social justice in these courses. My aim is to create a forum in which students can speak openly and develop critical communicative capacities. In these classes, invariably some students will invoke political correctness, and when it is introduced, it is often with a certainty and finality that suggests that discussion is over. The mere utterance of the term, in other words, announces closure and may, in fact, halt further analysis and discussion. This power to foreclose classroom discussion galvanized my interest in the discourse of political correctness. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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