POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: BACK THEN AND NOW

Authors
I.I. Valuitseva, M.O. Krukovskaia
Affiliation
Moscow Region State University
Issue 40
Pages
7-34

The given article focuses on the development and derivation of the concept of political correctness and its components, expressed in politically correct language. The authors have collected and structured data on the definitions and scope of political correctness. An empirical study of articles from American newspapers between 1884 and 2020 was taken from such newspapers as: Atlantic Monthly, The Pittsburgh Courier, The New York Age, Atlanta Voice, The Atlantic and others. Materials from early newspapers were taken from the New York Times official archives.

The presented research aims, among other things, to identify the social factors that affect certain politically taboo vocabulary units in relation to the black population in America, how the environment and social events have influenced the politically correct language. The following analysis has identified the most frequently tabooed lexical units for a given period of time and the frequency of their occurrence in American public opinion at different time intervals. The article provides concrete examples of language changes at the morphological and lexical level as a response to an existing social demand in society, such as combating discrimination on the grounds of race and gender in public space, in employment or in personal interaction, combating xenophobia and segregation at the level of politically correct language. Projections, concerning the derivation in ethically appropriate language, are made on the basis of the obtained data about the future development vector of political correctness indicators.

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Valuitseva, I.I. & Krukovskaia, M.O. (2020). Political correctness: back then and now. Issues of Applied Linguistics, 40, 7-34.

This artiсle is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.