Political Correctness. Language Change from Above

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, University of Cologne, course: How Language Change(s), language: English, abstract: The thesis of my paper is that prescriptions of politically correct language cause language change and may lead to an increasing equivocalness of language by incorporating euphemisms. To back up this argument, I will introduce the model of the so called euphemism treadmill created by linguist Steven Pinker. At first, a definition of the term political correctness will be given in the introduction. Furthermore, I will examine how language is changed through PC and through which mechanisms prescriptive speech codes emerge and can spread nationwide.

Additionally, due to the fact that the very first speech restrictions were set up on US high school campuses, I will also provide a survey in which I analyze the Self-attitude of students of the Philosophical Faculty (University of Cologne) towards politically correct language, with a special focus on nonsexist/genderneutral language. The results will be then compared to the current situation in the U.S.