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Comment by alpinisme | Hacker News Reader

This seems to miss one of the key roles euphemism plays (and why it courts controversy) it is interventionist and draws attention to a pattern of thought in order to get you to think differently about it. Part of the role a phrase like “differently abled” plays is to estrange your base assumptions about disability and to signal the existence of and your membership in a group of people concerned to change the conditions around disability (note that this is not the same as signaling “virtue” although it may do that as well—what I’m talking about is the construction and renewal of group identity around a social project).

Accordingly, you need new words whenever the old ones become standard, since at that point they no longer serve the estranging/interventionist role.

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What you describe is pretty much straight virtue-signaling. And as a disabled person, I can tell you, I need nothing of it.

Especially this "your membership in a group of people concerned to change" part, which is virtue-signalling at its best.

I have NEVER met someone using alternative language like "differently abled" who actually did something substiantial for the community or for a particular person. Almost all cases have a touch of patronisation.

I need nothing of it. If you cant call me disabled, you are part of the problem, not the solution.

I remember a few years ago someone posted a link here to a guy that had built a clever off-road wheelchair so that people with disabilities could enjoy hiking, and some people got upset with him because he used the wrong euphemisms.

Its a curious form of signalling that appears common amongst the American users of this site;

I recall one such poster getting upset over the word 'Chinaman'. Something this Englishman, sharing an office with two Irishman, a Frenchman and a Dane, found rather bizarre, particularly as the chap complaining was not Chinese themselves!

Such virtue signalling is at its worst when used to pile-on a speaker or post for uttering some perceived slight, or daring to suggest an unpopular idea or political view. It is bad for open discourse, even open society, and needs to stop.

As someone who isn't American but grew up in California in the 90s, I find myself often explaining American public behavior to others who are baffled by it.

As I see it, the US - the first place with a supposed egalitarian bent on the cosmopolitan society - created a system whereby people from all backgrounds and ethnicites could interact in the public sphere without tripping each other's emotional wires - that is the basis for Political Correctness. Keep your baggage at home, and out in the real world and in the market you can interact with everyone as equals (so, Mike Munger's "the answer is trasaction costs!").

The system worked pretty well for a time (fine, it's called the 90s). The problem is that the edifice kept on being built up, as more voices raised more touchy subjects that needed to be sanitized in public, enough that it began to bother people. I think that as alternative means of communication allowed people to more be "themselves" in the digital, if not real, public domain, the discrepancy between public discourse and private thought became more glaring.

Now, for every system, there are those who naturally like to uphold norms, and these are the ones you say are "virtue signalling" - I think they're just norm upholders. But for the rest of us, it takes only one euphemism that hits us the wrong way to get us questioning the whole over-built edifice. The fact that one political side arbitrarily took it up as a cause, of course, made the other side all the more dogmatic in its application.

So it will be eventually torn down and replaced by something identical and the cycle will continue anew. ~fin~

Not a native speaker, but while I would not have reacted, it is strange to use a term some negatively connoted instead of "Chinese man".

I think the Englishman comparison is not very smart. With the same logic, it's fine to use pedophile to refer to someone because it's grammatically constructed similarly to audiophile and no one never complained when associated to the word audiophile. I don't think a pejorative word (recognized as such in all modern dictionaries) stops to be pejorative because it exists a similar construction that is not pejorative.

And I don't think you need to be the one accused to be a pedophile to be offended when you see someone uselessly accusing someone else to be a pedophile. (but again, I would probably not have reacted, and have given the benefice of the doubt to the interlocutor, assuming they were unaware of the pejorative connotation)

> I recall one such poster getting upset over the word 'Chinaman'. Something this Englishman, sharing an office with two Irishman, a Frenchman and a Dane, found rather bizarre, particularly as the chap complaining was not Chinese themselves!

And yet "Chinaman" is considered derogatory. If you believe the Wikipedia page, it has been considered so since at least 1965 in British English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinaman

You might not consider it logical for "Chinaman" to be considered derogatory when similarly structured words like "Frenchman" are not, but the reality is that if you use the term then you will be evoking the current meaning.

> and needs to stop

The point of the article is that you can't stop the euphemism treadmill, no matter how emphatically you request it.

"Chinaman" is not inherently/originally a slur, but seriously who says that today? Even Englishman, Irishman and Frenchman sound slightly old-fashioned to me - surely you'd rather say "He's French" than "He's a Frenchman".

It's one of those words you certainly shouldn't be offended at finding in an old book, or not even if an elderly person uses it, but if a young person uses it then he's probably dug it up deliberately for questionable political reasons.

If the word had been "Chineseman," maybe it would fit with your other examples better. No one says, "He's an Englandman, Irelandman, Franceman, etc."

To me, this set of words would already lean negative and imply someone hopelessly devoted to a specific country, not someone of that nationality, even if "Chinaman" didn't also already have a pejorative history.

This is very typical, you observe that the expressions are slightly different linguistically, and then make a leap from that and posit that this makes it pejorative.

It's a bit similar to how some people just posit that "The Ukraine" or "The Congo" is somehow pejorative just because most countries don't have a definite article.

I don't even sort of follow what you mean here. All I'm doing is telling you what this set of words that nobody actually uses sound like they would mean to me.

The term that does exist, Chinaman, already has its own pejorative sense. It doesn't need that from me.

All I'm saying is that these other words (again, words that I didn't "make up," but also that nobody actually uses) would sound negative too, and are the actual parallels to the term in the parent's example.

On the contrary, your example shows that any pejorative connotation is NOT related to the etymology. "Englandman" doesn't sound pejorative, it just sounds strange because it's not an actual word. "Englander" is a real word that is not pejorative, but derived from the name of the country.

Of course it is. It comes directly from the etymology.

By using the name of the country rather than the demonym for its inhabitants, it implies some sort of preference for the country as country, to the degree that a person defines themselves by it, rather than a simple point of history about a person's ethnic heritage, over which the person had no control.

No it doesn't. It's just historical accident. If you look around you will notice that some demonyms are based on the country name, some or not. It doesn't correlate with it being pejorative. "Italian" or "Congolese" are not more pejorative than "Frenchman". They are just newer, because the countries are newer.

Not that any normal person thinks that there is anything negative with "some sort of preference for the country as country, to the degree that a person defines themselves by it". It's politically quite extreme to see that as "pejorative".

I love that you're still arguing with me about what words I cobbled together--which are not actually words anybody uses--sound like they mean and why.

I'm having real trouble coming up with a single country that has the demonym "[Country name]man."

There is a meaningful difference between the name of a country and the term for someone from that country. The second is inherently neutral, because no one controls where they're born. The first connotes that someone defines themselves by their connection to the country as a country (or that the person calling them that sees that as their primary identity, subordinate to the identity of the country itself).

Technically neither of those has “the” as part of its official name. Now The Bahamas on the other hand…

Putting aside the fact that it technically IS named "Republic of the Congo ", technically Mexico is named "The United States of Mexico", that's not really important.

People who claim that "The Congo" is offensive don't say that because it's not the official name (which it is), I guess they just presume that there must be some colonial racist reason, and not just the fact that it's named after a river.

"Republic of the Congo", or "République du Congo" in French, "du" being a shortened form of "de le", "of the". Other French speaking republics just have "République de N".

People who claim that "The Congo" is offensive don't say that because it's not the official name (which it is),

Except it isn't. Not without "The Republic of ..." (or "The Democratic Republic of ..." if we're talking about that other much larger country the phrase usually refers to) in front. And given that there are two such countries -- there's absolutely no modern use case for "The Congo" as a country name in any case.

I responded to this: > neither of those has “the” as part of its official name

which is clearly untrue.

Yes, there are two Congos. Both of them have "the" in their official name:

-République du Congo (The smaller one, with Brazzaville)

-République démocratique du Congo (The larger one, with Kinchasa)

It is true that the official "Republic of the Congo" is typically shortened to just Congo" in everyday speech, my original point was just that there is nothing "racist" or colonial about say "The Congo". It is not called that as a slur because it's somehow lesser than e.g. Namibia, it is just that it's named after the Congo river. But I have heard many people who like to be offended have a vague idea that the "the" is somehow offensive because most countries don't have it.

There is nothing "racist" or colonial about say "The Congo".

As regards the river basin. When applied to the respective countries individually (and without the "Republic of" qualifier), which are after all the context we're talking about here (not the river basin) it has an entirely different connotation. And again, there's simply no modern use case for "The Congo", by itself, as a name for either of these countries.

Whatsoever.

> it has an entirely different connotation

What connotation is that exactly? Does "The Virgin Islands", or "The Hague" for that matter, also have that connotation in your mind?

I am again just saying that there is nothing racist about the "the" in "The Congo". It is just a natural way to shorten "Republic of the Congo". It might be unusual nowadays, but that does not mean that there is anything pejorative about "The".

"Use case" has nothing to do with it, nothing about language use is fully "rational" or "optimal". It is obviously _possible_ to make do without the article, but what I am getting at is the misdirected anger some people seem to feel towards it.

What connotation is that exactly?

The connotation of intentionally ignoring their very, very, very clearly stated preference as to what their official name is. Neither of these countries refer to themselves as "The Congo" as such, and they've made it known that they would prefer that you not do so as well. That's all there is to it.

"Use case" has nothing to do with it,

Au contraire. Language is all about use cases.

It's use cases über alles, in fact.

People don't "just posit" that the outdated forms are pejorative. They hold that view because the countries themselves (at an official level) have deemed them to be so, due to their colonialist implications. And have therefore kindly requested you to stop using them.

Dane is here interesting. Why not Denmarkman or Denman or Danishman? Which one of those is correct in same way?

Probably because Denmark is a very old country, it predates most nation states, and the word originally referred to the tribe. Same with "Swede". They correspond to "Angles" I suppose.

I dunno.

A Dane, a Swede, a Norwegian (Norseman brings to mind beards and battle-axes), a German, a Welshman, a Luxembourger.

English is weird!

Source: An native English speaker of His Majesty the Kings English, not one of those weird leftpondian dialects :-)

It's not weird at all, and it's the same in all languages. Some of the countries are very new, or the speakers of the language only came in contact with it recently. Then it's more likely they will use a country-related term. If on the other hand you have been in contact with the people for hundreds, or thousands of years, long before modern nation states, you will probably be using a tribal name for them, like Dane or Swede.

It is usually easy to understand if you just look into it.

The comment you reply to does a good job describing one goal of this usage.

You can see virtue signaling in this behavior, and there may be a part of it, but that is not the only reason it is used and it's dicey to jump to the conclusion that virtue signaling can only be the main goal. The fact that you don't see these others goals or refuse to believe that they may be the main reason does not change the reality of the existence of these goals.

It's like people who are saying "if you say you prefer Linux over Windows, it's only because you are jealous of Windows popularity and want to feel different". Maybe it is, maybe it is not. But they just refuse to even consider that maybe the other person is not acting by jealousy.

> I have NEVER met someone using alternative language like "differently abled" who actually did something substiantial for the community or for a particular person. Almost all cases have a touch of patronisation.

That sentence sounds very strange to me: why on earth someone using alternative language like "differently abled" would suddenly be required to do something that you don't even blink an eye for people who don't use that language?

It feels like the virtue signaling resides in your eyes only: you are seeing someone saying X, you _invent_ that it is because they want to be seen as a knight helping the disabled people, and then you show that there is an incompatibility because they don't really act like a knight helping the disabled people.

But what if people using this language don't do it to be seen as a knight helping the disabled people. Then there is absolutely no incompatibility at all.

The fact that this incompatibility exists is even a clue that maybe this behavior has nothing to do with virtue signaling.

> And as a disabled person, I can tell you, I need nothing of it.

I think that the goal as described by the previous comment has nothing to do with you. The goal is to reshape the way of thinking "there is a hierarchy of 'good situation' with abled people on top" into "there are differences, with sometimes good situation and sometimes bad situation, but it's more complicated than that and simplifying the picture as a simple hierarchy is incorrect". The goal is not to please you, the goal is to avoid having a way of thinking that does not correspond to the reality.

It's the same reason why some people stop saying buzzwords like "artificial intelligence" when referring to a smartish complex algorithm composed of if conditions and no machine learning at all. They are not doing that to be fair to algorithm, they do that because there is a gain for them and for the society to not maintain misconceptions.

OK, I guess you have ablesplained everything now, thanks for teaching me the error of my ways!

Writing a serious reply doesn't feel like a good use of my time. You have already demonstrated that you have no regard for the lived experience of minorities and prefer your pseudoanalytical explanations over everything a person from such an in-group could tell you.

The truth is, the story is much more complicated. But trying to explain that to you feels draining and useless, so I just stop here.

Are you serious?

YOU are the one explaining what other have in their mind. I just tell you "maybe it's not so simple".

And you get all virtue signaling, explaining that everyone who dares not agreeing with you can only be a bad guy because you have a disabled get-out-of-jail-for-free card.

And that is not a "pseudoanalitical" explanation, that's sooo simple, if you don't get it, it's your problem. That's very easy: I don't call "artificial intelligence" an algorithm that is just a bunch of if-conditions, just because it's misleading. Others use "different abled" FOR THE SAME REASON. The fact that it does not affect you is irrelevant, you are not the reason they prefer to use a term they think (correctly or not, who cares) is better suited, and they don't do it to look good. It's very simple.

Oh yeah, I am of course using my disability to win an argument. Its not possible that I might have much deeper insight into daily communication between disabled and non-disabled people, no. I am just a frustrated blind guy trying to win an argument. As said, it is totally useless to continue this discussion with you. You are not willing to see.

So, please, explain to me, then.

The first comment is saying that one reason to use that is just because some people think that the other term is misleading and reinforce a representation of the reality that does not correspond well to the reality.

You answer by saying it's virtue signaling and that somehow if they use this term and don't also do things for disabled people they are inconsistent.

How is that virtue signaling? Is using "Netherlands" instead of "Holland" virtue signalling by pretending they care about dutch people? If they say "Netherlands" but they also don't actively participate to dutch charities, is it inconsistent?

You are talking about deeper insight into daily communication between disabled and non-disabled people. What does it have to do with the fact that some people prefer to use a term that they think correspond better to the reality? If I prefer to say "disabled people" instead of "disobled people" (because I prefer to use a term that I consider better because I consider spelling mistake not ideal), how your deeper insight into daily communication between disabled and non-disabled people is relevant?

Well, I guess that if I tell you "I prefer not making spelling mistake", I am ablesplaining to you, and you are not at all using your disability by explaining that I'm a bad person for not saying "disobled" because you are disabled so you know best.

Jesus Christ what kind of Le Redditor (tips fedora) response is this?

He's just pointing out that "differently" and "dis" have different connotations. You're not dis - abled. You ARE able to do things. And some things you have to do differently.

Stop belitteling my dsablity. You, as a non-disabled person, have absolutely no idea how much energy I have to invest to exist in your world and compensate for all the barriers that you are putting up (mostly unconsciously) to make it even harder. This is actually one reason why I am against euphemisms like differently abled. It might sound cosy from the perspective of a unexperienced outsider, but its just ignorance in reality.

There are so many things I can not do independently, and cant do with external help either because that is not always aviable, that I definitely feel disabled, not differently abled.

All of you have been spoiled by leftist ideas have absolutely no idea what are you doing and how patronising you actually are.

Its my life, I decide what words are appropriate. If you have been spoiled by language whitewashing, the problem is you, and not me.

Nobody is "belittling" anything, and the only reason you're resorting to that language is because you don't have anything of value to say. If you did, you'd actually say it. But no, let's just cry instead.

Look, all I'm saying is that the changing of these words ISN'T baseless and there IS some thought behind it.

Yes, you are disabled. But... you're not dis... abled. You ARE able to do things. That's not up for debate, so I'm not sure why you're arguing it. Will you really argue you're useless? No, you won't.

> I decide what words are appropriate

Absolutely not a soul on Earth is telling you this. Go ahead and drop the victim mentality, it makes you look really bad.

First of all, I could have interpreted this incorrectly, and if I did so - I apologize.

However, I think the parent tried (and seemingly failed) to convey the idea that the use of certain euphemism is intended to affect public opinion among the outsiders rather than the minority group in question.

In other words, it's not for disabled (or any other group) but the rest of the society, meant to change public opinion through removal (by avoiding use of terms that evoke those associations) of harmful stereotypes, thus the weird language. The meaningful purpose of virtue signalling is not to comfort oneself into how nice human one is, but to establish a societal norm by sending this "we're all considering ourselves decent folks here and we aren't looking down on $group, right y'all?" peer-pressurizing social message. Which is, of course, fake, but the idea is that given enough time it ends up becoming true. Generations change, young people don't have inherent biases, so they end up ingesting whatever is around them, which is the reason, I guess. Again, this is just my understanding of it trying to rationalize the idea (my logic is "it can't be just something stupid, right, someone must've thought it through?"), so I could be totally making things up.

Of course, I can't say this is all working as intended. Surely, not well, given how it feels offensive to the actual $group (like the example of calling a person disabled in this thread; or I've yet to see a Latin person who wouldn't frown at "latinx" linguistic nonsense, etc.), so it doesn't look like a great idea overall.

I have been privileged enough to only be discriminated based on my nationality and ethnic group (rather than more permanent things), so I have limited experience here. Just trying to figure it out and make an opinion of it.

>Part of the role a phrase like “differently abled” plays is to estrange your base assumptions about disability and to signal the existence of and your membership in a group of people concerned to change the conditions around disability

This is part of why this political language is so abrasive. Who are you (the "general you," not "you the person who posted this comment") to tell me what my current assumptions about the group are? It's incredibly presumptive and sanctimonious.

Euphemism is a funny cloak for something you don't like, something you'd rather not mention at all. Those who use euphemisms are often allergic to plain speech, as it shows everything as it really is, not as how they'd like to see it.

Edit. Dolores Umbridge from HP is a brilliant caricature on them.

This opinion of yours is a bit shit. Euphemism is a barrier that can give you welcome distance when you need to discuss or reference something unbearable.

I also want to point out the inherent absurdity of referencing an admitted caricature as if it was somehow demonstrative, especially considering the cartoonish villainy of the caricature.

The article definitely elides that the words didn't become loaded on their own, but there were deliberate projects and fights to load words like "welfare" with baggage. While "differently abled" is the result of disability activists gaining new ground, many of the other renamings listed represent retreats from contested territory.

I’m also skeptical that all of the things the article lumps under the umbrella “euphemism” are really the same thing or best described by that word. But to your point “retreats from contested territory” are probably the best examples of where that label would be appropriate

This explanation strikes me as euphemistic. Though it has some insight as well: "(and why it courts controversy) it is interventionist".

> Part of the role a phrase like “differently abled” plays is to estrange your base assumptions about disability and to signal the existence of and your membership in a group of people concerned to change the conditions around disability

Less euphemistically, you want to make other people think and act differently. And if disingenuous language policing or the threat of condemnation by said "group of people" gets the job done, that's just fine.

They state that directly - reread the bit where they mention the role the phrase 'differently abled' plays. They use no euphemisms.

What you're doing is asinine because it attempts to cast the familiar as alien and ironically is an example of the behavior you describe - you're being disingenuous and trying to 'make other people think and act differently'.

I don't know how else to say this: someone trying to change your mind is not an attack. People disliking you because you behave like shit is not a conspiracy.

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