This week at the State University of New York at Fredonia, a bulletin board in a dorm building was decorated with “inclusive language,” however it was really just a bunch of offensive words and why you shouldn’t use them. Telling people what NOT to say doesn’t sound like inclusive language to me!
Don’t believe me? Check this out!
Since when is telling people what words to not use actually helpful? Is controlling speech a good thing, and does it actually control speech? Deeming language as “offensive” or “inclusive” is incredibly subjective. You can ban all the words you want, but you can never get rid of everything that hurts your feelings, contrary to what leftists believe.
Instead of teaching young adults what words should hurt their feelings and should never be uttered, we should be teaching young children to have respect for one another.
With all of that said, the worst part about the poster was not the list of words you shouldn’t use. It was the fact that whoever designed the poster used a quote from 1984 by George Orwell. “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” This quote is in the context of the deterioration of language due to dictators. The basis of using the quote is eerie in itself, and the fact that a resident assistant at SUNY googled “quotes about language” and picked one from George Orwell, not realizing that it was written in reference to a totalitarian dystopian society, is ironic at best.
