This is absolutely insan- excuse my language, I mean wild!!
Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
781–790 of 1001 posts
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#782Already I disagree with their re-interpretation of the first word (addict). Have they ever actually interacted with, or been addicted to something? Your life revolves around the substance. If "addict" is dehumanizing then so is "carpenter".
Had to get to #6 (committed suicide - I worked delivering technology for the blind and visually impaired, no one is offended by "I see" or "I'm going in blind") before thinking "ok, this makes sense" since that framing implies a crime. But that's not their re-interpretation, which again doesn't make sense.
I had an old British colleague who used to say "what you Yanks need is a good old land war to set you straight again". I think he might be right
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#783Oh wow there was "latinx" there. People from Latin America take a lot of umbrage at having this little exonym pushed on us, believe me. It feels like colonialism. The term "Hispanic" is already very broad to refer to people from a large collection of polities with several cultural spheres in it, but at least the concept of "hispanoamérica" exists in it, and the word isn't a novel take on the Spanish language coming f…
Humor may apply here since the best way to kill this is to pronounce it la-tinks instead of Latin X. My parents are from Central America so feel free to say a latinks person told you it's pronounced that way.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#784The words themselves are never harmful. Its in their context of use where the potential "harm" lies.
What has led academia in particular to drive decontextualization of language like this? How have we, in just a few years, completely started to disregard contextual meaning of languange? Surely this has to be an active research field as well.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#785Others have called out some the silliness on this list, but honestly my biggest problem with it is that it's just so lazy , and often times flat out incorrect in its assumptions. - "Consider using 'devoted' instead of 'addicted.'" I'm sorry but you don't develop a physical devotion to heroin. It's an addiction. - They say the phrase "committed suicide" is problematic because it "trivializes the experiences of people…
> Nobody has ever said "landlady"
I have heard it in exactly one place, and that place is the movie Kung-fu Hustle.
Who is throwing handles?
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#786I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team. Except academia has taken it even further. You don't even need to pretend that you're the one injured. You can make up an imaginary person and pretend they are injur…
My issue with the list is that we're increasing the harm associated with the words in the list. If we perpetuate the story that people are harmed, and introduce new harmful associations that most people don't have, then we're broadening the blast radius ( oh sorry sphere of effect ). The stories we tell ourselves matter, and I don't see why everyone has to tell the most pessimistic, helpless story possible when these…
Is this only your feeling or has there been any psychological research to back up this feeling.
There has been extensive research into PTSD and other trauma syndromes. If what you are saying is true, then surely some psychological research has at least explored the possibility of the phenomena.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#787I consider myself a very leftist liberal, and some of this list sounds fair.
Some of it reads like bad satire.
"Died by suicide" is somehow LESS trivial than "committed suicide"? "Blind studies" are somehow bad things now, rather than admirable things?
And some of it reeks of linguistic arrogance. People aren't going to say "relationship with an abusive person" when "abusive relationship" is both much shorter and IDENTICAL.
And the IRONY in not only wanting to police content with trigger warnings, but to police the usage of the phrase "trigger warning" itself. How is this NOT satire?
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#788An excellent illustration of the beginnings of an SJW dystopia. Not just the list itself, but the general feeling of fear they want you to feel while speaking. One can draw a link between any word and a possible harm - something that a few comments have hilariously shown with some examples. So if the goal was protecting anyone from every possible harmful word, the list fails. But this demonstrates real evil that hide…
I think you mean dystopia because what this leads to is no utopia in my mind
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#789If language can harm you, I don't see how one can't make the case that advertisements (especially billboards and non-consenual/contractual advertisements) aren't also harm and should be eliminated.
I have some advertising jingles stuck in my head that I've not been able to remove since childhood.
Re: Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative
#790I reject the notion that anyone hearing or reading a word from this list could possibly experience anything properly categorized as "harm". This is what's known in the sports world as "flopping" - feigning an injury to elicit a penalty on the other team. Except academia has taken it even further. You don't even need to pretend that you're the one injured. You can make up an imaginary person and pretend they are injur…
It's a complex subject.
But I happen to be from Bosnia and even when I first immigrated to Canada in the late 90s, I was amused at my Canadian friends constantly getting offended on my behalf. A joke or reference that somebody would make that I would find funny or agree with, would send my friends in a whirl and a twirl. I focused on intent - these particular people in these particular circumstances neither wanted nor did offend the relevant party.
I fear if we treat words themselves as "offensive", making lists with no consideration of intent, circumstance, relationship, and actual impact, it's at best a pointless and at worst a divisive and Orwellian exercise.
Edit : some suggestions are genuinely useful and thoughtful, and I think conversation rather than lists is where we should focus, as even the very second line on the list - "replace addicted with hooked" - isn't it obvious that next iteration of the list will include "hooked"??