Thread

1. jamienk · 1790431482 · focus · HN ↗

   In _1984_ the Big Brother regime has the idea that by controlling language you can influence what is possible to think, and thus becomes a key tool of political repression.

   Political Correctness has a similar idea that by adjusting the terminology we use, we can purge biases and historical implications and speak in a purer way.

   Psychoanalysis has its own idea of repression - where a person struggles to BLOCK our associations between ideas, memories, and words in order to try to stop one thought from being contaminated by another, intolerable thought.

   All of these attempts to control language are fundamentally misguided at best, often have severe unintended consequences, and are genuinely immoral at worse.

   1. p_j_w · 1790432917 · focus · HN ↗

      > Political Correctness has a similar idea that by adjusting the terminology we use, we can purge biases and historical implications and speak in a purer way.

      You either misunderstand political correctness or are trying to make it sound more nefarious than it is. It is nothing more than an effort, sometimes overdone and misguided, to not say things that make minorities feel bad. It’s nothing more than an attempt to broaden what’s considered good manners.

      If anyone serious thinks political correctness is going to end racism, I certainly haven’t seen it.

      > Psychoanalysis has its own idea of repression - where a person struggles to BLOCK our associations between ideas, memories, and words in order to try to stop one thought from being contaminated by another, intolerable thought.

      It’s been a while since I took Psych 101, but my memory is that, according to Freud, repression is subconscious. There’s no struggle possible because there is no intent. It’s also about memories and emotions, so if it WAS an intentional act, it’s not an attempt to control language. It wouldn’t be about trying to not think of the word cat, but trying to not think about that time when your cat died.

      1. jamienk · 1790434075 · focus · HN ↗

         With Political Correctness, you analyze a word, reveal connotations that expose an unwanted origin or association, try to come up with a new word that does not have those connections, and then try to enforce the usage of the new word. All with the idea that the force of the old associations will no longer have a hold (manners and mores, which I agree with you about, don't have this goal). But the old forces and powers are perfectly capable of attaching themselves to the new words.

         The struggle in repression is real, even if it's unconscious. The psychoanalyst asks to speak with FREE ASSOCIATION and the inability to do this in SPEECH is what reveals unconscious problems. Repression, though, is a STRATEGY that we most definitely sign-on to. It FEELS unjust to be asked to take responsibility for something we didn't INTEND to do, but that, unfortunately, is our task in life.

         1. pessimizer · 1790437304 · focus · HN ↗

            You can get dinged here for using capital letters to highlight rather than *asterisks*. Yes, I know.

            1. dahart · 1790438546 · focus · HN ↗

               Well, that’s in the guidelines. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html

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