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Deconstructionism And Language Shift – The Scientific Troubles Of Political Correctness

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Simon C.

Media Literacy and Academic Research

2020

vol. 3

issue 1

46-56

Deconstructionism teaches us, that power lies within language, or rather that power decides, what language is supposed to mean. The old question asked in Alice in Wonderland: „Who decides, what words mean?“ builds up to the discrepancy in any language between the individual speaker’s intention and his or her position in the political power hierarchy. In recent decades calls for a more humane language have arisen, giving birth to movements of political correctness in the Western hemisphere, making it an issue of globalisation being fairly paired with left-wing ideology, making everyday conversation a subject of critique, calling for normative changes in language and ultimately facing the same question everywhere: Does it in fact help? This paper will shed light on the empirical linguistic knowledge we possess on the connection between form and content, going back to De Saussure and following the discourse of language and power in an historical manner, thus taking a hard look at the theoretical background of the dynamics of power and language, building a chronology of deconstructivist theorists like Derrida, Foucault, Bourdieu, and Barthes. These theories will be paralleled with the so-called linguistic turn from its beginning to the nowadays so popular Neo-Whorfian approach. Finally the deconstructivist method will be put in contrast to what we know about the connection between language on action following John Austin, circling back to the postmodern discursive approach known in everyday life: The language policing of everyday conversations by individual speakers, representing the deconstructivist movement, comparing it to the empirical data about language and culture, the named and the unnamed, empowerment and the mechanics of language shifting that were subject to studies already more than a hundred years ago, focusing on the shift of meaning and tabooing of vocabulary, dissecting what critics of political correctness call the „euphemism treadmill“, building up to the effects of political correctness we have come to experience so far. The goal is to finally answer the question, whether language policing and the growing public attention to the use of language do have an egalitarian effect on reality.

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1 Media Literacy and Academic Research

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Deconstructionism And Language Shift – The Scientific Troubles Of Political Correctness