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Comment by Freak_NL | Hacker News Reader

Did someone ever work out the relevant academic theory that describes this linguistic process?

A word starts out as neutral, but gradually transitions to becoming a slur (a process that seemingly takes decades), and is replaced by a new politically correct word which is seen as too avant-garde at first, but gets established in part due to a lack of push-back (because any criticism will make the person levelling it seem a bigot/racist/ass), and eventually that becomes the default word, until it starts sliding into slur territory and the cycle starts anew.

I'm not sure if this process can actually be prevented.

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John McWhorter refers to it as the Euphemism Treadmill but I can't say if it's a widely accepted term in the field

I think the treadmill aspect also happens for words used by teenagers. They use, for example, “hip”. Once their children are teenagers, they don’t want to be like their parents, so they use “hot”. Their children, in turn, pick yet another word, making “cool” the new “hot” (chances are I’m not mentioning these in the historically correct order)

The same process seems to apply to social networks (“Facebook is for parents”)

In all these cases, there’s a mechanism that makes a word or product tabu within certain social circles, forcing them to come up with a new term.

The process that leads to things becoming tabu stays, however, so the cycle repeats itself.

I wouldn’t know what it would be, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a more generic term that applies to all of these.

The euphemism treadmill is what I've heard most often, as well.

Coined by Stephen Pinker in 1994 apparently: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/euphemism_treadmill

Also known as "euphemism cycle": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill

Yep I've observed and described this process myself over the years. look at:

> "negro" => "colored" => "black" => "African American" => "person of color"

It's pretty inane when you think about it. At some point wouldn't people start noting that, hey, you're trying to solve something clearly, but what you're attempting to do is clearly not the right approach.

This does signal what type of person you are dealing with if they don't go along with the word change. For example, if I heard someone using the negro word I would think that there was an excellent chance that person was racist. The renaming also signals to everyone racism isn't acceptable (in a very minor way). It is hard to change a culture but the words we use in one of the ways we do it.

When the world stops being racist this renaming will stop.

> When the world stops being racist this renaming will stop.

As well say “renaming will not stop.” Something will always be wrong to someone. Change will always be right to someone.

It’s like a woke cycle. I’m not sure it’s really about the words, but in some ways, the new people look at the terrible attitudes of the previous people (easy to count on that) and feel the need to disavow it by creating a linguistic line in the sand.. some jump over it, but the others get the sharp end of the stick, culturally speaking.

The advocacy and social signaling feels more imperative than the ancillary social improvements that may be happening either way. It also feels generationally alienating, while some of the “I see things with new eyes” part can happen even among those who don’t even know the words have changed.

I'm not sure about your example - "black" and "African American" are still perfectly acceptable terms, or did I miss something?

Regardless, it may be the case that a permanent state of euphemism treadmilling does solve a problem - a social signal, perhaps, to distinguish those who embrace social change and those who resist it. It's pretty effective at that too.

It's considered incredibly insensitive to refer to black people as "African American" as it makes a presumption about their nationality. See countless examples, of Americans thinking they're being polite and addressing, say, an Ethiopian woman, living in London as "African American".

Considered by whom? I happen to agree, it's a very silly term. However it's still in widespread use, and if it's losing ground at all it's to "Black" and "Black American", which is reverse to the direction you originally indicated.

It's the euphemism treadmill.

It’s kind of like unending administrative bloat.

Realize that there are people making a living off of trying to find new things to be offended by.

Once you realize that, the world starts to make a lot of sense :)

I definitely recognize this process (and have heard the term euphemism treadmill from McWhorter the other commenter pointed out) but since when has "disabled" been used as a slur? I'm sure it's happened, but I'm not sure I've ever heard of someone using disabled in a derogatory manner like you would hear "retarded" commonly used now.

I get the sense that "disabled" is still in its avant-garde phase. "retarded" passed that in my circles maybe a few years ago, but also there was a time where it was much like "disabled" is today.

Aside, somehow "retarded" got replaced by "special needs" or "short bus" in some circles which also sounds insulting to me, so maybe we'll continue this treadmill for awhile longer.

this button is disabled this button is retarded this button is special needs

I could go with the first two in a code review.

And then you could go explain that second one to HR.

It’s the French translation

"Short bus" was always a slur.

Where I am disabled is not in common use.

Differently abled is OK. Learning differences or special needs also works. Disabilities I think is still OK.

I'm kind of on board with getting away from retarded and disabled.

I literally recall "differently abled" as being the punch line to a joke (Simpsons perhaps?). A character put his foot in his mouth, and tried to back-pedal and sort of ad-hoc formulated the phrase "differently abled" as a way to sound more PC and sensitive. It was quite literally supposed a joke at the time.

Yep, Nassim Taleb has written about it: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Language is so fluid and used by different people with different connotations of words that I don’t think it’s “preventable” if it is something to be prevented.

I see this tug of war of new word as part of the process for finding the best word… for this particular zeitgeist.

I remember in the 2000s, “a person with autism” was preferred because they are first and foremost a person who happens to have autism. But this year I learned some people prefer the term “autistic” as they claim it as part of who they are.

I opened this thread hoping to say this exact same thing and you hit the nail on the head.

I had this discussion with someone not long ago about the term "homeless" or "homelessness" and their argument was that this was an overly aggressive word and was outdated. The damn word describes exactly what it is, which is a person that is without a home.

Does George Carlin’s stage analysis of soft language count as academic?

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