It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor

Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by motorest on Monday January 13, 2025 @01:24AM (#42680626)

> The sort of language policing taking place in TFA is a club: a blunt-force social weapon that (predominantly white) leftists use to keep each other down, by emphasizing the recipient's lack of ideological purity, manifested in this context by being insufficiently sensitive to the possibility of hurting someone's feelings.

To this, I call out the case of the words Spanish speakers have been using to refer to disabled persons.

The word for "disabled person" was at a point in time deemed too insensitive and an outright insult, so around the 1970s the word "subnormal" started showing up even in government acts to appease the virtue signaling crowd.

Except that after a few years the word "subnormal" also managed to find itself as a prime example of a gross PC violation, and therefore they coined the term "minusválido" (i.e., "less than valid", a milder form of "invalid") to appease the PC gods.

But lo and behold, "minusválido" is now also looked poorly by the PC crowd as being offensive.

https://languageacts.org/loaded-meanings/schools-teachers/ri...

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by f1shy on Monday January 13, 2025 @03:05AM (#42681168)

Hell even discapacitado (disabled) is incorrenow. Now correct is “person with different capabilities”

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by toxik on Monday January 13, 2025 @01:39AM (#42680695)

Pinker wrote about this process, nothing to do with political correctness.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/euphemism_treadmill

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by stackghost on Monday January 13, 2025 @01:33AM (#42680660)

>disabled persons

How à propos, because in English "disabled" is no longer acceptable and they now demand that you say "differently-abled".

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by Double_a_92 on Monday January 13, 2025 @04:56AM (#42681807)

Ironically that feels kinda rude to me. Like if I wasn't able to walk, I would want people to aknowledge that... instead of pretending that I just move differently.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by etblg on Monday January 13, 2025 @11:40AM (#42685357)

Well.......if you weren't able to walk, you would be moving differently, not exactly pretending would it be?

I mean hell it's not even a less accurate description, you're not able to walk but you're able to move around using crutches or a wheelchair or other mobility device. A person who isn't able to walk may still be able to do almost everything day to day (well aside from walking) that a non-disabled (or non-differently abled person, ok that sounds kinda weird) person would be able to, albeit in a different way.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by Double_a_92 on Sunday January 26, 2025 @05:49PM (#42835045)

Because it somewhat removes that implication that that different way is harder to live with.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by Nursie on Monday January 13, 2025 @07:00AM (#42682562)

Eh, I think “People with disabilities” has now taken over, the idea being to emphasise that they are people.

It feels… inconsequential.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by djur on Monday January 13, 2025 @09:26AM (#42683714)

"Differently-abled" feels '90s corpo to me. The disability rights people I know pretty much all favor "disabled" or "with disability" and have for many years.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by novemp on Monday January 13, 2025 @09:40AM (#42683861)

Literally no disabled person says "differently abled".

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by stackghost on Monday January 13, 2025 @12:04PM (#42685674)

Of course not, but the language police don't care about disabled people.

These are the same people who publish "inclusive language guides" with garbage like "don't use the term Brainwave because it's dehumanizing to people with intellectual disabilities".

It's an entire R&D field dedicated to finding new and creative ways to be offended.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by novemp on Monday January 13, 2025 @05:07PM (#42690096)

Ah, so when you said "they" your pronoun didn't match your antecedent. Makes sense considering no one on this site seems to know what a pronoun even is anymore.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by stackghost on Monday January 13, 2025 @09:42PM (#42692841)

I was never taught English grammar and have no clue what an antecedent is, nor any clue how to make a pronoun match it.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by azernik on Monday January 13, 2025 @12:09PM (#42685757)

Who is "they"? I have never in my life heard this demand.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by stackghost on Monday January 13, 2025 @02:48PM (#42688036)

The sort of people who make careers out of this type of thing: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/words-and-phrases-comm...

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by azernik on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @04:41AM (#42695454)

Even that ridiculous thing doesn't have "differently abled".

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by smsm42 on Monday January 13, 2025 @11:41AM (#42685371)

Euphemism treadmill is real and never stops.

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Re:It's time to abandon the cargo cult metaphor by themaninthedark on Monday January 13, 2025 @12:51PM (#42686248)

George Carlinwas calling it out in the 90's https://youtu.be/o25I2fzFGoY?si=0a6rXtCboK-suL-4

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