I’ve received my latest copy of The Atlantic Monthly in the mail and was entertained by an article entitled “The Language Police,” by Diane Ravitch (March 2003 p82-83). There’s no link to the article online yet (I suppose that’s fair enough or else I wouldn’t be buying their magazine) but I will add the link next month when the article becomes available online.
“The Language Police” contains a list of banned words and stereotypes compliled from educational publishers and government agencies. Some of the banned words listed were -
- Boys’ night out - banned as sexist
- Fairy – banned because it suggests homosexuality; replace with “elf”
- Yacht – banned as elitist
- One-man band - banned as sexist; replace with “one-person performance”
- Turning a deaf ear – banned as handicapism.
I thought the days of PC were well and truly gone but apparently I’m wrong. Here are some stereotyped images that are supposed to be avoided in text and illustrations.
Other no-nos
- Women portrayed as teachers, mothers, nurses, and/or secretaries
- Men playing sports or working with tools
- Boys as intelligent, logical, mechanical
- Pioneer woman riding in covered wagon while man walks
- People of colour being angry
- Native Americans with braids, long hair and headbands
- Mexicans grinding corn
- Older people fishing, baking, knitting, whittling, rocking in chairs, or watching television
- African-Americans who are baggage handlers
Wow, there’s so many places to start making fun of a list like that. Next thing you know it’ll be a no-no to portray black people smiling because the the difference between their teeth and skin colour may alarm or cause uncomfortablility.
They’re taking the piss, right?
What about not showing geeks in front of computers, or hiding in the corner reading, or not portraying geeks as being bad or hateful of sport, or having no friends, or being up the front of the glass being smart-arses?
This kind of thing really pisses me off. A good remedy, I always find, is to spend an hour or so browsing through the many delights of the now notorious profanisaurus, compiled by Viz character Roger Mellie, The Man on the Telly. Enjoy. Oh, and don’t show yer mum!
http://www.viz.co.uk/profanisaurus/profanis.htm
Good suggestion you ‘brown pipe engineer.’Go and find someone to ‘play your pink oboe’ and you won’t even have to worry about the internet. Better still, if you could find a couple of good ‘clam jousters,’ all your problems would be solved.
I always thought you were the type that would rather drain his spuds into a rusty sherrif’s badge than a mapatasi. One mention of my chocolate starfish and you’d be off giving Ronaldo a rub-down until you spilled your gentleman’s relish.
he he he. I wonder if anyone knows what we’re talking about here Mark?
Who cares what is being said, slurs like that, it is ridiculous, so many people are too politically correct, I mean c’mon it’s just a saying
i had to airbrush the nipples off some cow udders for an American kids book.
it was printed fine here, but we sold it to a yank publisher and they had all these language changes and had to insert less WASPY kids, involving a reshoot and a lot of time staring at cow teats.
milk only comes from 7 eleven over there.