Re:Why We Banned the Word “Ethnic” (2019)
by shadowgovt on Sunday March 13, 2022 @12:11PM
(#30662600)
Indeed. One could even draw an analogy between lazy journalists who use a word like "ethnic" as a shortcut for describing the actual situation and lazy forum commenters who just toss a labored 1984 quote out instead of explaining why this instance of language modification is bad while other instances of language modification (such as the neologism "troon," a word that already had a meaning but that meaning has been redefined in common usage) are acceptable.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
1984 is great because it bifurcates most responses in a revealing way: there are people who understand it as a cautionary tale against something that hasn't happened, and people who understand its many wonderful metaphors as representing recurring themes in human politics. So many of the phrases the former crowd likes to trot out would tickle Syme to death: people come up with their own NewSpeak in the form of thought-terminating cliches to opt out of reason entirely.
edit to bring it back to the topic: "ethnic" as a catch-all is actually a brilliant example of what NewSpeak is a metaphor for.