Maybe some of you remember a post from last spring where I quoted an article from Mpls's free 'zine The Rake about the censorship of the film 'Sideways' for airline in-flight movies. No? Well, the gist of it was that they replaced a dirty word for a jerk with the word 'Ashcroft' and inserted it over the original word in the movie. With this said, I found something else online today.
That is, the list of the year's most used politically correct words - from English language papers around the world. The group, Global Language Monitor, compiled the list which was topped by "Misguided Criminals" as a euphamism for terrorists and "Thought shower/word shower" to replace brainstorm (which may be offensive to those with brain conditions such as epilepsy). The list is quite interesting and quite funny.
Being an English teacher and full time wonk - perhaps this is just the sort of stuff that makes me laugh these days, but I thought the list to be pretty interesting. Language can dictate the way we perceive an issue or problem and, as I learned, those who control the language, control the conversation.
Another cool site, if you have time to waste, is Behindthename.com which tracks names in the English language, their roots and translations into different languages.
In all, these are interesting for those who believe that language is important.
Oh yeah, and in the word X-Mas, the Greek letter 'Chi' represented by the Roman X actually stands for the first two letters of the name Christ. So, think you're PC and wish someone a merry 'X-Mas'! Sucka!
和平。保罗。peace. paul.
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