Supposedly, if we change how we talk for the better, we'll change how we think for the better.
The idea of political correctness is much disputed, has a long history, and means different things to different people (I recommend the online Wikipedia article). I want to look at just one of its aspects, but a basic one.
Early on, "politically correct" or "PC" meant not saying anything with prejudicial political implications. For instance, North Americans shouldn't refer to Asians as "Orientals" because that's a Euro-centric term, since "the Orient" or Far East is that only from a particular geographical location which the term prioritizes.
The original idea had more to do with not endorsing imperialist and racist political positions than with not offending people, as it does now.
PC came to be used mainly to soften the edges of language, especially regarding negatively differentiating and allegedly sexist terms. So "retarded" became "intellectually challenged" and "policeman" became "policeperson."
What underlies the sometimes sound, sometimes silly reworking of language is the Sapirs-Whorf hypothesis that thinking is shaped by language; that linguistic categories define conceptual ones. The idea is that discourse doesn't just convey thought but partly determines it.
So the theory is that if you get people to talk in nonracist and nonsexist ways, they'll soon think like and be nonsexists and nonracists. This is why some denounce PC as mind-control, like Orwellian Newspeak imposed to manage people's thinking.
Many resent PC, so it doesn't reshape their thinking. I know of a wheel-chair bound woman who hates being described as "mobility challenged," saying she's helplessly paralyzed rather than faced with a challenge she might overcome with effort.
But lets say that over the long term PC does work. I think the big question then is: Who's to say what expressions will best reshape our thinking?
What's worrying about PC expressions we hear is their lack of specificity, their vagueness. Take a trivial example: Oscars used to be awarded to best actor and best actress. But "actor" is now gender-neutral, so how are Oscars awarded?
Well, some differences matter to us, so they're awarded to "Best actor (female)" and "Best actor (male)."
This doesn't look like a lot of progress. Are we ready to entrust future generations' thinking patterns to those who thought it necessary to gender-neutralize "actor"?
Like all complex ideas, PC has pluses and minuses and has changed over time. We need to rethink it and might start by changing PC to HIP: "political correctness" to "human interactive propriety."
