Political Language and Political Correctness

(tijd) - De Hongaarse schrijver György Konrád kon in het geheel niet met het communistische regime opschieten. Toch trok hij nooit uit zijn geboorteland weg, ook al had hij daar - onder meer tijdens de Hongaarse Opstand in 1956 - de kans toe. Later boden de toenmalige politieke autoriteiten hem zelfs de gelegenheid: van 1982 tot 1984 verbleef Konrád met een beurs in Berlijn. 'Je kunt de tijd beter zijn tijd geven', zal hij gedacht hebben. Die tijd heeft het, met het nieuwe Europa, nu gehaald.

Verschenen in de cultuurbijdrage van De Tijd: https://www.tijd.be/algemeen/algemeen/Het-Europese-legaat-van-een-Hongaarse-schrijver/5372910?_sp_ses=255892aa-07dc-4e7e-9552-e11796ccec80

Op de bank bij Slavoj Zizek 10SCHENK DIT ARTIKEL 02 juni 2004 08:40 (tijd)-Slavoj Zizek werd geboren in 1949 in het Sloveense Ljubljana. Hij werkt er als senior researcher aan het Institutu za sociologijo in filozofijo. Maar hij is niet alleen filosoof: als producent van teksten wordt hij nog het best omschreven als beschouwer van 'populaire cultuurproducten'. Zizek waarschuwt de westerling om, in de roep naar een cultureel 'eigen' Europa, niet te hopen op een zuivere Oost-Europese cultuur, vrij van Amerikaanse invloeden.

Verschenen in de cultuurbijdrage van De Tijd: https://www.tijd.be/algemeen/algemeen/Op-de-bank-bij-Slavoj-Zizek/5372538?_sp_ses=255892aa-07dc-4e7e-9552-e11796ccec80

Esteemed doctors, cut-purses, lawyers, footpads, engineers, scofflaws, and others. Let me introduce myself. I'm Paddy, a younger brother of Dee. I'm from Murrumbeena. News flash: The Deirdre you see today has most likely stolen the identity of the real Dee. Here's how I arrived at this seemingly astonishing conclusion. The person here today spends very little time in Melbourne-she's always travelling in either Australia or abroad. This is because she finds trying to live like (and pass as) a real Moriarty very stressful-but don't all we Moriartys? One possibility is that the clever Dee-simulacrum who is partying with us today is an Alien. But given that, historically, aliens arriving on Earth only ever seem to meet up with total losers, I think they've given up coming here. Also, there's only so much new scientific knowledge you can get from anal probes. So it's very likely that the Dee-creature here with us today is on a short-term release from Hell. These are quite common today, and I'm sure you've met plenty of other persons who can only be here because of these releases. For the inadequately religious, I must explain that Hell is the place where in less politically-correct times the residents were insulting labelled 'the wicked condemned to everlasting fire'. We now refer to them as ethically-innovative individuals enjoying hyper-prolonged thermodynamically-enhanced lifestyles. I and the rest of you here, are unlikely to be among them-I always touch on and touch off my Myki Card, and I don't covet my neighbour's oxen. (In fact, in the block of flats I live in in Murrumbeena, the Body Corporate frowns on residents keeping oxen or other livestock in their apartments, which lessens the temptation somewhat.) And I follow the injunction to be nice to other people-although I have to say it has never worked for me. Yet there are problems in this alternative Paradise. Hell's policy-makers are under pressure to sign the 2015 Paris agreement on global warming. Further, the residents signed up for warmth, not for sulphurous air pollution from burning brimstone. There are important health and safety issues involved here, and law suits will follow. So Hell may have to close down. This fits in well with the neo-liberal idea of releasing troubled and tormented souls back into the care of the community. Of course this means that one of the chief pleasures of Heaven according to St Thomas Acquinas-enjoying the sufferings of the tormented-will be lost to us nice people. ('Hey, look down there, it's Uncle Bill, the adulterer!' 'Hot enough for you today, Uncle Bill?') And while we're on the subject of religion and the wicked, this totally irrelevant thought occurred to me. You probably know that judges pronouncing the death sentence would put on a cap and say (I'm paraphrasing-I haven't personally experienced this) '…and may you be taken to the place of execution, and hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may God have mercy on your soul.' But in our secular age, the last admonition will have to go, so the judge should now say '…and hanged by the neck until you are dead. (Pause). And have a nice day!!' (As an aside to this aside, also note the lack of subtlety. Wouldn't it have been better-and kinder-if the judge said: 'Good news Mr Smith, I've found a way for you to dodge paying any taxes next year'? Or, 'Mr Smith, I've just sent you a text message you might be interested in reading'?) But, unfortunately, in spite of these (and other) possibilities that recently came to mind (well, my mind at least), I was expecting the real Dee to be with us today (and I'm a little disappointed we only got a simulacrum) and prepared my talk accordingly. So, I ask you to use your imaginations and pretend we have the real Dee with us. (In any case, it's a bit late to cancel the party.) Birthdays. I've done some advanced (advanced for me, anyhow) mathematical calculations on the birthday phenomenon. Today in Melbourne, about 50 other people will be celebrating their 80 th birthdays. I worked this out from the UN demographic statistics. For some reason their

It is sometimes said that the societal debate on a policy issue has become polarized. Most social scientists have an implicit understanding of this expression. But social science lacks formal and objective techniques to measure the evolution of political or societal debates on a policy issue. How does one know for sure whether a debate is polarizing or whether it evolves in the direction of consensus? To what degree has a debate polarized? What is the distance between the protagonists? This article attempts to fill this gap in the methodological knowledge of the social sciences by presenting a method for the formal measurement of dynamics of policy conflict by analysing discourse. The method is based on a combination of content analysis and social network analysis. In this article, it will be exemplified by the analysis of the historical debate on abortion in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives (1972-1990).

This research focused on investigating the expressive speech acts found in “Avatar: The Way of The Water” Movie. The research implied the theory of Searle and Vanderveken (1985). In collecting the data, the method is observation, and the technique is note-taking. In analyzing the data, the data were examined using the pragmatic identity method and pragmatic competence-in-equalizing technique.  The data was taken from the utterances in the Avatar movie. There are 46 expressive speech acts found in the movie which are divided into 10 acts. The expressive speech acts with most occurrences were complaint with 11 occurrences, followed by 8 data of greet, 7 data of apologize, 5 data of compliment, 5 data of protest, 3 data of lament, 3 data of thank, 2 data of boast, 1 data of praise, and 1 data of deplore. The expressive speech acts condole and congratulate were not found in the movie, because the death mostly was found in the war and the victory achieved was an obligation that they had ...

Confederate monuments, like all public monuments, are a form of state speech. As such, they are prohibited from endorsing, or expressing nostalgia for, racial hierarchy and white supremacy. In many cases, Confederate monuments are reasonably seen as expressing these views, and are therefore prohibited forms of state speech. But Confederate monuments are also a very diverse set of objects, varying in terms of their time of construction, their spatial location, their form, and their inscriptions. Some monuments are more objectionable than others because of their characteristics on these dimensions, and our normative assessments must take account of these features.

This study investigates the cultural and linguistic aspects of politeness found in selected Yoruba greetings within a short story that is taught to high school learners. To examine the politeness strategies used in Yoruba greetings, a simple textual analysis was employed. The concept of politeness considers greetings as significant in all human conversational interactions since they contribute to establishing and maintaining rapport between speakers. This study identifies several functions of greetings, including discourse initiation and termination, gap filling, solidarity, security and acceptance, courtesy and respect, and comradeship. Additionally, the study explores the social distance between interlocutors, the power dynamics between the speaker and the listener, and the formal relationships between them, which influence the specific types of politeness strategies employed. This research provides valuable insights into the behavioural characteristics and cultural values of Yoruba language speakers and individuals from other linguistic backgrounds worldwide.

Abstract: The task of the article is to outline a range of questions answers to which may help to understand the concept of wisdom as it functions in the English language and English-speaking culture. Analysis is conducted of the data on the concept of wisdom in a number of lexicographic sources, such as dictionaries of General English, English thesauri, a dictionary of synonyms, and dictionaries of English proverbs whose semantics when treated in terms of cognitive linguistics is considered as a reflection of popular knowledge verbalized by speakers of the language. Taking into account a huge amount of information in lexicographic sources, some problems concerning the concept of wisdom are formulated with a view to future detailed analysis. When studying the concept, dictionaries of phrase and fable may be of use, dictionaries of idioms, various dictionaries of combinability of English and its collocations, quotations dictionaries, dictionaries of allusions and even the companion to English literature. To clarify the semantics of the concept of wisdom in the English language and English-speaking culture, careful analysis was undertaken of the data in The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus and Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms. Proceeding from the definition “A concept captured by the language sign becomes the meaning of a word”, the author considers the semantics of the word “wisdom” and its synonyms, at the same time trying to analyse the diatopic differences between how the concept is understood in the British and American varieties of English.
Key words: the concept of wisdom, lexicographic sources, synonyms, English-speaking culture.

Het is nog maar de vraag of we per definitie geneigd zijn het woord te spreken van diegene wiens brood we eten. De recente geschiedenis van de Nederlands-Antilliaanse eilanden kent in ieder geval vele voorbeelden van het tegenovergestelde: de Antillen en Aruba mogen in menig opzicht Nederlands brood eten, maar daarmee dansen ze nog niet naar het pijpen van de koloniale 'weldoeners'.
Desalniettemin, dit gezegde - waaraan in het begin van dit betoog ruimschoots wordt getornd - vormt praktisch tóch een van de belangrijkste aannames van dit betoog ten behoeve van het hoofd bieden aan onderwijsproblemen. In hedendaags Nederlands heet het: if you cannot beat them, join them.

Ti jd sc h ri ft v o o r G en d er st u d ie s ● 2 0 10 ● n r. 2 ‘Er is geen vrouwenbeweging meer. Af en toe staat een klein groepje op, maar er is geen collectief onrustgevoel. Veel vrouwen hebben individueel onbehagen over bijvoorbeeld de moeite die het kost om werk en gezin te combineren, het feit dat mannen zo weinig in huis doen, de barrieres die ze in hun werk tegenkomen. Maar een collectief onbehagen ontbreekt’, aldus Hedy d’Ancona in Trouw (Kooke, 2008). Het is gedaan met de Nederlandse vrouwenbeweging, zo meent ze. Ze krijgt bijval van leeftijdsgenoten. Ciska Dresselhuys: ‘Vrouwen van nu denken dat het allemaal voor elkaar is, dat alles mogelijk is voor vrouwen, dat alle hindernissen zijn weggeruimd. Er moet echter nog heel veel bereikt worden’ (in Van Saane, 1999). Een generatiegenoot van d’Ancona en Dresselhuys op een internetforum: ‘Het lijkt wel of de jonge vrouwen van vandaag het allemaal wel best vinden zo. Zij weten amper iets van feminisme en van vrouwengeschiedenis...

In opdracht van de Vlaamse regering maakt het JeugdOnderzoeksPlatform of JOP een jaarlijkse monitor op over hoe het gesteld is met de jeugd in Vlaanderen. Recent werden de resultaten van ‘de JOP-stadsmonitor Gent-Antwerpen’ gelanceerd in de media. Daarop verscheen een reactie met bedenkingen over de onderzoeksmethodologie, problematische stellingen en veralgemenende conclusies in het JOP onderzoek “Gent-Antwerpen” (Zie Haudenhuyse, Debruyne, ea., 2013)ii. Een kort artikel “Wel jong, niet homofoob?” van Lilith Roggemans in het tijdschrift ‘KRAX’ is een neerslag van een onderzoeksluik van die stadsmonitor over de houding ten aanzien van ‘de Ander’: over tolerantie, homofobie, islamofobie en antisemitisme. De uitgesproken conclusies van dit onderzoeksluik doen heel wat stof opwaaien. De negatieve houding ten aanzien van ‘de Ander’ op voorgenoemde vlakken is grotendeels herleidbaar tot ‘religieuze opvattingen’ en ‘cultuur’. Kortom: hoe religieuzer, hoe minder tolerant. Noch ‘klasse’, no...

Over de zin van het leven buigt iedereen zich wel eens. Filosoof Geert Van Coillie heeft het liever over 'zin in het leven'. Dat thema diept hij uit op vraag van het postuniversitair centrum van de KU Leuven. In een lezing die kadert in de reeks Denkend Geloven aan de Technologiecampus in Gent, schrijft hij een menswetenschappelijk verhaal voor een breed publiek van zinzoekers.

J. R. R. Tolkien is among the world’s most popular authors, yet his works are criticized for being politically incorrect. Tolkien’s Europe-centered focus, darker-skinned villains, and mostly-male cast generate interpretations of white supremacy, racism, and sexism. In this paper, such accusations are discussed and compared to the actual text. A closer reading of Tolkien’s work shows diverse character depictions and personalities. Evil is not strictly black-and-white; there are plenty of evil characters among the Elves, Dwarves, Men, and even Hobbits. Tolkien’s world is full of strong, interesting women, some of whom evolved as Tolkien’s ideas evolved. Romance is a serious topic, with forced marriages ending poorly. The paper concludes Tolkien’s stories should be judged by other criteria—Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, Consolation—rather than identity politics.

Lumumba. The conspiracies? The murder. Research report or historical study?Written by four historians, ’Lumumba. The conspiracies? The murder’ is based upon the official report of the Belgian parliamentary commission of inquiry in which they participated.  The commission of inquiry was set up to investigate whether the then Belgian government bore any responsibility for the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo after the country gained independence from Belgium. The official report concluded that the Belgian government of that time bore a moral responsibility for the assassination. The fact that the federal Belgian parliament deemed it necessary to set up a commission of inquiry to establish the official truth suggests that the country has still not come to terms with its colonial past. The book adds little to the report, largely because the authors behaved more like judges intent on passing a verdict of guilty or innocent than indep...

This paper is just recording some pretty funny humor. The author started the AI under a specific premise, which was on his mind. And the humor ended up just going off the rails with Don Rickles roasting everything. If you need a trigger warning… maybe just don't read the paper, because it's supposed to be offensive.

Language contacts in globalisation do not only establish communication, but also may threaten national security. Unreliable, unrestricted, uncontrolled information streams, casual language contacts increase such dangers a bit in the global network established by ICT. Language safety has become one of the main components of national security as a defence factor for many developed societies. The issue of language security is studied and ensured strictly at the national level in Azerbaijan, the leading country in the South Caucasus. As historically, Persian, Arabic and Russian languages have had a permanent influence on the linguistic landscape of Azerbaijan. This article considers language as a means of communication and conflict and seeks an answer for the question "How useful or dangerous is it to speak in the language of globalisation?".

Humour and laughter have become prevalent themes in management and organization studies over the last few decades (Westwood and Rhodes, 2007; Bolton and Houlihan, 2009). This is perhaps unsurprising as joking is a part of all workplaces, not to mention everyday life. Studies have documented the prevalence of clowning, horseplay, pranks, satire, ridicule and lampooning in a variety of settings and at every level in the organizational hierarchy (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999). But while joking is certainly pervasive, the meaning and significance of humour at work is by no means uncontested: humour is said to serve variously as a coping mechanism, a subversive strategy and a management tool in contemporary organizations. Starting from this basis, the special issue seeks to explore the ‘inescapable ambiguity of humour’ (Kenny and Euchler, 2012: 307) in culture, society and organizations.