Not long ago on a flight to Paris, I had the good fortune to be seated next to The Honorable Tinga Seisay, former Consul General of Sierra Leone to the United States. We had met years before when Mr.Seisay was Dean of the Consular Corp in New York and again in the early 1980's when he was in Washington campaigning for human rights. Much has changed since our last chat and we had a lot of catching up to do. It was most pleasant to reminisce about our old colleague George H.W. Bush, who was Richard Nixon's Ambassador to the United Nations back in the 1970's. Who could have predicted the turn of events that would shape human history?
When I told him I was going to lecture on language and politics we had an animated discussion about the pressure to be politically correct, which Mr.Seisay clearly disdained. He told me, "Politically correct terminology has a insidious tendency to stifle free speech and that can be dangerous."
I told him I'd be sure to let my students know how he felt. A day or two later, he sent me a note offering the following postscript: "The pursuit of so-called politically correct words is the search for neutral language. But language is a historical product and therefore rather biased. By it's nature, language is manipulative and that's the crux."
Indeed, how many people would aspire to political correctness if they knew it had it's origins in Chairman Mao's Little Red Book?
When I told him I was going to lecture on language and politics we had an animated discussion about the pressure to be politically correct, which Mr.Seisay clearly disdained. He told me, "Politically correct terminology has a insidious tendency to stifle free speech and that can be dangerous."
I told him I'd be sure to let my students know how he felt. A day or two later, he sent me a note offering the following postscript: "The pursuit of so-called politically correct words is the search for neutral language. But language is a historical product and therefore rather biased. By it's nature, language is manipulative and that's the crux."
Indeed, how many people would aspire to political correctness if they knew it had it's origins in Chairman Mao's Little Red Book?
