Terms, their meanings history and implications. (The Semantics thread)

Decency, as a term (and taking into account its implications of both words and actions), is a bit more vague than political correctness, though.

edited 18th Aug '15 6:48:36 PM by Quag15

If I were to say that I don't believe in God and that I think religion can often be harmful, I don't think you could rightly object to that with an argument based on political correctness. If I insulted people by calling them "Papist" or something along those lines, though, you'd be entirely right in calling me out on not being politically correct.

Of course there's a lot of context that can make the difference. For instance, Tim Minchin's "Pope Song" uses that word (and many others) to refer to Catholics who are involved with, or defending, the sexual abuse of children - and subsequent cover-up of that crime - by Catholic priests and institutions. In the context of that song, though, especially regarding its end, I don't think it's fair to object to it on the basis of it being politically incorrect.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Sure. But I can object to it (the song) on the basis of a use of petty generalizations, and baseless accusations towards one specific person (if he had referred to, say, certain archbishops or certain members of the Curia of doing the cover-up, he'd be a bit more right - people who are not Catholics tend to think the Pope has loads of power within the Church and he's responsible for every single thing that happens within it^note Face it, could you regulate and control the entirety of an institution with 2000 years and with 1.2 billion members (in general numbers, including the ones who are cultural Catholics)?, when his power has become increasingly diminished since the 19th century).

And accusing people who happen support the Pope on unrelated matters (theological discussions, which Minchin finds boring) and teachings on morality, ^note which are often given in regards to the Church and Catholics - hence why most people know fuck all about what papal infallibility really means and how it came to prominence and how it's so rarely used) of supporting the paedo priests sounds... like a fallacy of some sort (can't recall the name, though - I know it led to some people accusing Catholics (as a whole) of being child rapists by proxy - this accusation is far more harmful than any song could ever be).

For the record, I listened to the Tim Minchin song just now. Is it politically incorrect? Meh, not really (his cursing, due to the musical setting, is, in fact, repetitively catchy), imo (though it is incorrect from a social and religious standpoint, at least to some people - the 'religious' bit doesn't matter to him, I know...). Is it incorrect in terms of its all-encompassing judgement of the whole affair (and the Church as a whole) and the role of the Pope? Yes, yes it is.

TL;DR: I have proper and better arguments than the political incorrectness one in regards to Tim Minchin's song.

Was my assessment of his song fair enough, Best Of?

I concur.

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In regards to politically incorrect songs, what are your opinions in regards to those early lines of "The Classical" by The Fall?

edited 18th Aug '15 8:16:53 PM by Quag15

Face Palm A whole lot of this.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Yeah, most people with some kind of disability don't use a wheelchair. Less sighted people, for instance. But I kinda assumed that was only for people actually in a wheelchair. Which raises the question of what they'd call the rest.

edited 19th Aug '15 3:48:56 AM by AnotherDuck

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Minchin says (in the song) that he's only accusing the people who participated in the crimes or cover-up, and thus not all Catholics.

The song was made when Ratzinger was Pope, and he has been accused of either actively covering up the crimes, or at least of failing to investigate and act on them appropriately and openly, with secular authorities. So as far as I can tell the song doesn't actually attack anyone just for being Catholic.

I don't think Minchin would write that song (at least with same lyrics) now that the current Pope isn't someone who could have reported the crimes to police and other authorities but decided not to do it.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

I don't really see "disabled" as an insult. Maybe it would be slightly better to say "person with a disability" than "disabled person". But if you have a problem you need help with, don't you kind of have to acknowledge the problem exists at some point? And "differently abled" and "handicapable" sound a little silly. Then again, I'm not disabled, so I'm probably not the best judge for what's appropriate.

edited 19th Aug '15 5:47:00 AM by Morgikit

I just call everyone "people" because that is what they are, and everyone is flawed anyways so categorizing, unless you are looking for a way to help them, seems rather arbitrary

Unless they are taxi drivers

Those are all literally satan.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

You know; are any Catholics these days really offended by the term 'Papist'? It's such an antiquated term I don't think they would be

I don't think they've reclaimed it, either. In any case, there are very few contexts where that word would be a good choice so it's better to just not use it.

I mean, even when Minchin uses it in his song it's not OK just because he happened to need something that rhymes with "rapist". He justifies it by the context: in discussing people who covered up priests' crimes he's juxtaposing their loyalty for the Pope/church with their loyalty for the state/justice system and the victims. Thus the reference to their apparently excessive loyalty to the Pope and the institutions represented by the Pope are the target of the insult.

I think if he was mocking people just for being Catholic it'd be a horrible and unfunny song - I don't think many would disagree with that. He does go out of his way to explain why that's not what he's doing, though.

But yeah, I don't think I've ever seen a neutral or positive use of the word "Papist" so I don't think people consider it acceptable. The implication of "Papist" is that the Pope is the highest authority for the target of that insult - i.e. they consider the Pope more sacred or important than whatever other entity the one using the insult would prefer that people hold as their highest authority. It'll usually be another religious entity (God or Jesus, probably,) or the state. Of course this is not an accurate description of most Catholics, and that, fundamentally, is why it's not a very useful word.

Using it to criticise Ratzinger and his ilk, though, is at least justifiable, IMO. They very specifically did refrain from cooperating with secular authorities even though they knew what some priests had done and that they could and should have turned those priests in to the police. Thus they obviously did hold the social standing of the church in a higher regard than the state, the justice system, or any past and future victims of those priests.

I know I've been going on about this particular case and Minchin and so on, and I worry that I'm derailing the thread - but I'm trying to discuss a specific case that can only be understood in context, and since that context is not very simple it's taking me many paragraphs to discuss it thoroughly. I'm afraid these walls of text are probably the only way I can comment on this in sufficient depth. Sorry about that.

edited 19th Aug '15 8:30:45 AM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Most of the time, using any more specific term than "people" would imply there's a point in using that term. However, when there is a point to it and whatever that more specific group of people is, it's useful to have someting to refer to them, and that's what I believe is being talked about here.

Personally, with regard to the word "handicapped", I always think of handicaps in sports, which has a positive connotation (something imposed on people who're better than others to give the others a more fair chance). As in, it's something that lowers your performance, but in absolutely no way says anything negative about the person.

Unless they're Indian. Then they just work for Satan.

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Keyword here is most, implication being that a dictionary or guideline to how to refer to people in social situations is something useless to categorize people on by disease,disorder, gender, or sexual preference.

Knowing that someone is homosexual tells me almost nothing about their personality or likes and wants. It is like trying to judge people by their name alone: everyone has a different one but you won't know how this person is like until you meet them or something.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

God and Jesus (and the Holy Spirit, because Trinity - there's no 'or' around here).

The term is not often used. Keep also in mind a different use of the word as well: when used here (the Portuguese expression "mais papista que o Papa" - "more papist than the Pope"), it's also referred to people who think they're higher on the morality horse (and other things) than the Pope - in other words, it can be used to call someone 'too moralistic (and arrogant)', 'stuck-up prude', and so forth.

Ok, didn't know it was written during the times of Pope Benedict (dude was a good intelectual, but he was tied by the paedo bishops and members of the Curia (as well as some ambassadors) around him). Fair point.

I also apologize for the derail.

And that's completely irrelevant to the questions of what word should be used in those situations where it is appropriate, and what words are offensive (or not).

Keyword here is almost. Knowing someone is homosexual tells you something about their sexual preference, which can be useful on the social scene. A name on the other hand tells you absolutely nothing about the person other than what name that person has.

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I like the term "handicapped", it suggests that they're playing Life on a higher difficulty setting, but not that they aren't winning at it. It's rather accurate, and got that challenge accepted vibe to it.

I came to the thread specifically to deliver this.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

And also on the subject of semantics — what do you call a migrant?

Keep Rolling On

In the situation described there? Refugee is good. But ideally I think "Migrant" should eventually lose it's negative implications because using "Refugee" will sound weird once some of them find a better country to live in and start getting houses and jobs and stuff.

Maybe some of you may find this interesting.

Some of you may have heard of the game Video Game/Nier. Nier is a game set in a post-apocalyptic future made by Cavia Games and published by Square Enix. A particular detail of it is that, in order to reflect the long time away it is from the modern world it was requested that the vocalist/lyricist of the songs, Emi Evans, made up new languages by taking various modern languages and then altered some words/grammar structures/ and others in order to make an intentionally bastardized version of the languages to reflect how they would develop in and become in the future.

This is something that brings several topics to my mind. But... to pick one, the different ways same or similar words can be taken depending on the language we are speaking. Or, heck, even in different dialects of the same language.

For example, in another topic involving a particular languages site in another forum I go to we started listing the ways the same word can take different meanings.

One of the examples being used was...

Coger (European Spanish) :To get vs Coger (American Spanish): To fuck

And I myself brougt up the example of...

Embaraçada, embarassed. (Portuguese) vs Embarazada, pregnant. (Some dialects of Spanish)

There are several possible reasons for such. They include history of the people who happened to speak those languages, influence from other nations, etc. But learning about them is still interesting.

Any of you have any comments?

"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!

Semantic drift sucks, and so does the Euphemism Treadmill.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

But they still are things that happen. For example, the article a few posts above about Migrants.

I think that as a phenomenon they deserve to be studied.

"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!

I remenber went a friend of mind said "the disable of today will become the retard of the past" which I actually make me thing about how this terms change....a lot.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

It's actually rather common for medical terms to be used as insults later to the point they switch to newer terms.

For example, Flowers For Algernon used the term "Retard" quite a bit. When nowadays that would have been seen as very demeaning.

"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!

The problem isn't the euphemism treadmill, the problem is people using medical conditions as an insult. That's not okay, and I can hardly understand how anyone would find it okay.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Medical Conditions, like everything else, have a lot of negative stereotypes attached to them.

People use these conditions as insults because these stereotypes make it "okay" to be used as insult. It implies, through connection, that person fits those stereotypes and the person using it can always fall back on the idea they meant calling that person as the behavior attached to those stereotypes rather than the actual condition.

It's kinda like when someone says they used "Gay" as in "Lame" and then wonder why anyone complained about it.

"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!

Yeah, that association is so... out-of-the-blue. Gays in pop culture are associated with "camp" at worst, you know, "baroque", "overwrought", "panache", but not, you know, "lame", "weak", or "dull". The "tiresome" kind of boring, not the "monotonous" kind of boring.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

On a similar topic...

This article brings up several terms that had their meaning changed with time.

"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!