Tuesday, July 01, 2003
ORWELL'S RULES REVISITED
posted 12:04 PM
ORWELL'S RULES
Bear makes the point that I don't much abide by those rules myself. This occurred to me also, shortly after I posted them.
I think that the one piece of newspeak that's struck me as most barbarous, in Orwell's sense, in my lifetime, has been "politically correct".
I can actually remember the very first time I heard it. In Seattle, as it happened. I assumed that the person who'd used it was (1) using it entirely ironically, and (2) having as I thought coined it just then, was far cleverer, and funnier, than I'd previously given him credit for. My horror, subsequently, at discovering that his usage was entirely irony-free, was...Orwellian.
I suppose in the meantime that those people capable of using it without irony have pretty much ceased to use it (though not, I'd guess, to think it).
ORWELL'S RULES REVISITED; ADVENT OF "PC"
posted 12:04 PM
ORWELL'S RULES
Bear makes the point that I don't much abide by those rules myself. This occurred to me also, shortly after I posted them.
I think the new usage that has struck me as most barbarous, in Orwell's sense, in my lifetime, has been the expression "politically correct".
I can actually remember the very first time I heard it. In Seattle, as it happened. I assumed that the person who'd used it was (1) using it entirely ironically, and (2) having as I thought coined it just then, was far cleverer, and funnier, than I'd previously given him credit for. My horror, subsequently, at discovering that his usage was entirely irony-free, was...Orwellian.
I suppose, in the meantime, that those people capable of using it without irony have pretty much ceased to use it (though not, I'd guess, to think it).
It bothered me more, even, than that more actively barbarous late 20th-century expression, "ethnic cleansing", probably because I've never met anyone who would admit to being in favor of...actually I don't like to use this phrase, because it seems so inherently, er, politically incorrect.
MEANWHILE, FASHIONPOLICE HAS STARTED A POLL...
Earliest experience of "PC". I'd guess late Eighties, for me.