July 29, 2014
Source: Shutterstock
McWhorter insists that much of this stuff is just so much chin music. I”ll leave it to Steve Sailer to mine the deeper implications of McWhorter’s thesis, but then again, he may not bother. With characteristic pith, Sailer puts in simply that McWhorter’s ideas are:
So close, but so far away. Shouldn”t the distinction be obvious that grammar hasn”t proven to be terribly important, but vocabulary has? Orwell’s Newspeak is less about grammar than about controlling what vocabulary is politically correct, and thus narrowing the limits of what it is convenient to think. (…) Who gets called what depends upon who has the power.
We”re forced to witness myriad depressing and infuriating examples around us, virtually every minute of every day.
Even the other side occasionally wearies of its own long linguistic war; one afternoon, I chanced to see the mighty Oprah, mid-edification, stumble and sigh: “”Colored,” “black,” “Negro,” or whatever we”re called this week …”
Leftists, of course, deny being engaged in a multigenerational, real-time production of “Gaslight Meets 1984,” and will likely wave unread copies of The Language Hoax in the air as proof. These are the same people who, for generations, have shushed, “Sheesh, it’s only a movie,” and “If you don”t like it, change the channel,” all while shoving trillions of dollars into subversive “entertainment” propaganda.
And who”conveniently exempt from their own advice, as usual”carry out bloodthirsty battles to hasten showbiz firings and cancellations in the wake of real or perceived “ungood duckspeak“ violations.
Surely it matters who gets to name the snow. And it sure ain”t the Eskimos. (Or whatever they”re called this week.)
