POLITICAL CORRECTNESS – THE CASE OF THE VANISHING TRUST?

1. Dr. Irina Perianova, University of National and World Economy, Sofia inogina@yahoo.com POLITICAL CORRECTNESS – THE CASE OF THE VANISHING TRUST?

2. Outline • My presentation focuses on one of the most important phenomena of the 20th century- political correctness (pc) which may be viewed as a communicative code of globalization with its denial of centre/periphery relationship and hierarchy , its emphasis on a culturally pluralistic and interconnected global society lacking any single dominant center of political power, communication, or intellectual production. Due to these core values of globalization pc takes on the function of an ethical language. I also plan to analyse pc in Bulgaria as post-communist discourse.

3. PC and Non-essentialism • “Cultures are ideational entities; as such they are permeable, susceptible to influence from other cultures. Wherever exchange among humans occurs, the possibility exists of the influence of one culture by another.” B.Fay. Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science: A Multicultural Approach, Oxford: Blackwell (1996: 59)

4. Pc and avoidance • The phenomenon of avoidance is universal though the objects of avoidance may differ in different languages and in different cultures. • PC is the product of globalization and is not universal

5. Pc examples • Dutch treat, • French letter, • Ten Little Indians/Negroes • Niggardly, • my own white hands, • darling, dear

6. PC as a strategy • Pc is a strategy used to preserve personal images mutually, achieve a respectful symmetry within relationships by hiding (revealingly) any real or perceived inequality of different variety .

7. Avoidance under socialism • What is sometimes regarded as socialist pc is no such thing: it was a language of inequality rather than equality and perpetuated difference and otherisation

8. PC and Behaviour Codification • pc should be treated as behaviour codification, • new commodified language It aims to discontinue any form of Otherisation (at least on the surface) Pc is confined to the following subjects: race, age, gender, rank, appearance, abilities, health (physical and mental The ab/users are accused of sexism, chauvinism, rankism, ageism.

9. Proscribed list • Don’t saySay instead • A cripple disabled person • Invalid disabled person • Handicapped disabled • Mentally retarded/handicapped person with learning difficulties • Deaf aid hearing aid • The disabled people with impaired mobility/a disability • Spastic person with cerebral palsy • Confined to a wheelchair wheel chair user wheelchair bound • Deaf and dumb profoundly deaf • Disabled toilet accessible toilet • I. Outhart, L. Taylor , R. Barker, Travel and Tourism, Advanced Vocational Training, (London: Marvell Collins, 2000) p. 340.

10. Non-pc objects

11. Paternalism and trust -Consumer capitalism aims to standardize consumption and to shape tastes through advertising and “new ‘paternalism’ in which experts of all types minister to the needs of the lay population (Anthony Giddens . Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press 1994: 172- 174). The world is increasingly becoming professional (Serge Moscovici), or expert-oriented (Anthony Giddens) -Expertise and transaction (and commodification) are the determinants of the modern globalized world The new code thus imposed makes the lay minds easier to control via the common denominator of trust in the expert

12. Pc as a language game • The new missionary EU code ( power dialogue) includes pc as a language game. Linguistic umpires are monitoring the process of what may or may not be said.

13. Trust and Mistrust • Language games show another facet of trust – we are guided to use other words by new society – we are MIStrusted – we do not know any better. It is we who should trust the new shared discourse which reflects standardized and globalized language.

14. Trust and Intimacy • Our situated identities differ in different settings, most prominently in public and private space. This seems to apply to different societies

15. RationaleControlling the environment by language • Dominant discourse. Roland Barthes’ concept of ex-nomination (Mythologies. Editions du Seuil, 1957) • CAT : Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles, H. and P.M.Smith (1979) ‘Accommodation Theory: optimal levels of convergence’ in Giles, H. and R.St Clair (eds.) Language and Social Psychology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell) Attuning and accommodation strategies consist of a broad set of linguistic and extra-linguistic signals which enable us to adapt our communicative acts to those of our partners, shifting them along a convergent or divergent direction in the sequence of exchange

16. PC in post-communist Bulgaria • 1)Fewer objects are un/pc • 2)No (anti)elitism • 3) No rankism • 4)Gender pc

17. Racial pc in Bulgaria • циганин – ром – джипси – мангал - мангасар • хубава работа, ама българска • като бял човек

18. Geographical pc • Село : град (urban vs. rural) • Sofia : other places • Bulgaria : the West • Aussies : Wessies

19. Semantic bleaching • Perlocutionary effect • The meaning is eroded via its excess (Baudrillard ) • MOUTH WIDE SHUT(implicature)

20. Indexation, reference; representation, icons • Reference implies inference. Indexing is dependent on a context to provide it with something to point to. • Representation (the symbol and the icon) are context free (Widdowson, H.G. Explorations in Applied Linguistics 2, OUP, 1986: 150 – 152) • From representation to indexation and back

21. Conclusion • Pc is an essential part of a new grammar of communication with its underlying structure of wishful thinking; a new post-modernist discourse. It is polysemic in the Bakhtinian sense – it both reveals and hides one’s ideology simultaneously and hence it should be viewed as the Mouth Wide Shut phenomenon. • Through the new pc language we are inventing new us (Cf. Eva Hoffman. Lost in Translation 1989 who describes how English was inventing her). • The new communicative competence is yet to be acquired by many groups.

22. ? • Have we mastered the new communication competence? • We are learning! Some are good students Others are -challenged!