Label debate

I missed this, so I'm grateful to Dizzy for pointing out:

the perceptive point that Francis Wheen made in the Standard. He said that if we're going to be offended by the term "autism" if used in a pejorative and adjective sense then we should stop using the word schizophrenic to describe political ambivalence.

I'm not sure I agree, though, that the whole fuss is "political correctness gone mad". I think that using tragic diseases as an insult should be avoided, as a matter of politeness if nothing else.

Comments

[dizzy]

Thanks for the backlink Danny. I think, personally, that rather than it being about the cliche of it's "political correctness gone mad" it's more about how the use of certain words are becoming prescribed and, seemingly being seen as owned by particular defintions.

Clearly the lexicon doesn't work like that though. There are many words that multiple deifntion, which can mean many things dependent on context, and that, for me at least is my worry in the way we seem to be restricting the use of terms.