Attack of the Word Police
The Language Police strike.
I read an interesting article at Daily Writing Tips and want to share. It is about censorship—more specifically about self-censorship of language in textbooks. The article took a look at the book ‘The Language Police’ by Diane Ravitch. The book focuses on words which are no longer encouraged for textbooks.
This was a partial list of words covered in a book;
While I agree that some of these words are not exactly archaic, but definitely dated, others give me pause to wonder what the word police are up to. Words like prime, turn, ball, past: even the word old. How does the word bond offend? And cone is a shape, isn’t it? What about that word puts the hackles up? When does censorship go too far?
What do you think about this? Do you agree with this list? Would you add any words or take a few of them out?
Sheila
June 6, 2015 @ 12:58 pm
Another example of political correctness gone amok.
Timoteo
May 5, 2015 @ 12:18 pm
Won’t be long before we’ll be down to so few acceptable words that all books will read like Dick and Jane.
kkrige
May 5, 2015 @ 1:54 pm
@Timoteo: I hope not! Language has such beautiful nuances. I know that changes happen, but when we lose words due to instances like this, it can be sad.
Let’s keep the yachts alive! 😉