Political Correctness and Taboo

"If we use a word, our listeners naturally assume we have used it intentionally" - David Crystal

In order to maintain an face-saving / reinforcing and positive identity when communicating with others, it is crucial that we develop the ability to anticipate the nuances of our language across various contexts and learn to control them.

Furthermore, we need to have awareness of the ever-evolving attitudes towards language use and tailor our own language in accordance to them in order to maintain a positive identity. This is exemplified in the notion of taboo. The notion of taboo involves profanity, expletives, gestures and other social behaviours that are interpreted as inappropriate or rude in a particular context. The of the degree to which something has the ability to incite shock or offence within an audience are dependent on pre existing social conventions and attitudes within a given context, the relationship between the speaker and the audience and the topic at hand.

In contemporary Australian society, the most sensitive domains relate to gender, race and sexual orientation, and this is reflected in the potential for sexist, racist and homophobic language to create uproar within the community. These notions have been exemplified recently in Australian media with the Adam Goodes incident where a 13 year old girl was removed from an AFL match after calling him an "ape" at Goodes' command. Similarly, Julia Gillard was applauded in her speech in the House of Representatives earlier in 2013 where she called out the Leader of the Opposition's misogynistic behaviour.

The Political Correctness movement began in the 1980s and saw an increasing number of people becoming aware of the potentially discriminatory implications of English and subsequently seeking to eradicate them through purporting a more neutral language. They wanted to substitute things like the "Generic-He" for a more neutralised and inclusive language. Their naive perception was that is offensive language could be eradicated, social change would follow naturally. Their lack of the nature of language saw that the offensive connotations associated with the word "disabled" for example, were soon transferred to its "neutral" replacement term "intellectually handicapped" in "disabled"'s absence.

More issues came about when there were disagreements about what exactly constitutes an offensive term and the fact that is a nigh on impossible to monitor spontaneous speech and eradicate the idiomatic habits of a lifetime. One may refer to a friend as a "fucking cunt" as a term of endearment or as one to elicit maximal offence  It is entirely context dependent.