I think language influences attitudes. So do images. Changing words by itself will not transform what people believe. But it can have a positive impact.
Or to put it another way, I taught my children not to use certain words as part of my attempt to help them develop what I considered to be acceptable attitudes. Don't we all do that? Alan Brownstein -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brad Pardee Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 2:19 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name I work in a college library, and in the course of cataloging (and re-cataloging) older materials, I've seen this kind of name adjustment, and it never addresses the underlying issue of what people think of the term in question. The best example of this that I've seen is "handicapped". I've cataloged materials put out by organizations for the "Feeble Minded". But feeble minded became a negative description, so we switched to "retarded". And before long, retarded was just as negative as feeble minded, so then we went to "handicapped". And then "challenged" or "differently abled". In the end, the word changes didn't accomplish anything outside of showing how politically correct a person was because the people who looked down on the feeble minded were going to look down on those people no matter what they were called. We changed words without changing attitudes, and consequently, we really didn't change anything of significance at all. Brad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Volokh, Eugene" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Law & Religion issues for Law Academics" <religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu> Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 4:09 PM Subject: RE: The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name What's more, I'm personally quite tired of being told how many words and phrases I'm not supposed to use: handicapped, policeman, rule of thumb, black, American Indian, and hundreds more. _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others. _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
