Is inclusionary language a feature of culture, or language?

[strawman]

In the US it is politically incorrect to refer to a group using exclusionary language. For instance it's inappropriate to refer to homosexuals as non-heterosexuals.

A number of people, myself included, were recently introduced to the term cisgender due to Gabe's (of Penny Arcade fame) flame war two days ago. Cisgender was created so people could talk about non-transexuals without being exclusionary.

This serves at least a few purposes:
1. Inclusive language is seen as more positive than exclusive language - thus more politically correct.
2. Better defined, for instance not all non-heterosexuals are homosexual.
3. Gives groups an identity they can use as a shortcut when getting to know others.

Is it common in other languages and cultures to create words so as to avoid exclusionary language?

Is this a feature of English, or a feature of the US culture?

I know we have a few people who speak other languages fluently, and live outside the US, so I'm interested in their perspectives on the creation of inclusive language in their society.

 

[Cog]

In my country, people prefer to use positive words, like "it's not good" instead of "it's bad", "it's not open" instead of "it's closed" and things like that. Some people even correct me if I don't speak that way. Don't know why.

 

[PatrThom]

English has the unusual distinction of being a language where there is no gender, which makes it inherently less exclusionary, if anything.
Saying you ARE something adds you to a group. Saying you ARE NOT something removes you. Saying, "He's a great husband, but a lousy father" is like saying you could Google him (or others like him) by typing "husband -father"

FWIW, I lament the lack of a third descriptor for "neither." As it is, I am trapped in a world where stating that you like something automatically implies that you dislike its opposite. Why can't I just be allowed to be meh about things?

--Patrick

 

[DarkAudit]

Why can't I just be allowed to be meh about things?

Because the fanbois of things require total fealty to things. anything less is to be shunned.

 

[PatrThom]

Because the fanbois of things require total fealty to things. anything less is to be shunned.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." "You're either with us, or against us."
Why can't I be neither (or even both)?

--Patrick

 

[strawman]

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

 

[Emrys]

 

[PatrThom]

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

INCORRECT -- You could also be part of the solvent (or the container).
...which is what I was getting at with my languRage earlier.

To be completely serious, here, I believe that these implied absolutes actually harm communication and thinking, i.e. that people so used to an implied absolute are less likely to be able to think outside the box, so to speak.

--Patrick

 

[Chad Sexington]

INCORRECT -- You could also be part of the solvent (or the container).
...which is what I was getting at with my languRage earlier.

To be completely serious, here, I believe that these implied absolutes actually harm communication and thinking, i.e. that people so used to an implied absolute are less likely to be able to think outside the box, so to speak.

--Patrick

I feel like you're suggesting I can only think inside the box, or outside the box. Why can't I think about the box?! Absolutist.

 

[drifter]

Why's it gotta be a box? Shapist.

 

[Bubble181]

I have trouble with the original question, as language is, itself, a cultural construct.
That said, in most (Western) languages, the "standard" word is male, and female is a variation. It's fairly rare in English (a teacher is still a teacher, a policeman becomes a policewoman, that sort of thing), far more common in both French and Dutch.
Obviously, that's culturally bound. The word for "nurse" in Dutch is, standard, a female word. There's now a male version, but that sounds about as comfortable as "policewoman" does. Of course, the word for "doctor" is male, and a female version of that was made, etc - and you can see the culture behind it in action. A hundred years ago, all doctors were male, most nurses were female. Just like, once upon a time, there were no female police officers, thus not needing a gender-neutral word for "policeman".

So, our language(s) is formed by our culture; separating the two out is practically impossible.
That said, specific sensitivities and ways of handling that sort of thing are very much culturally defined. Saying people are non-heterosexual isn't harder than saying they're homosexual (or bi-, a-, furry- or other- ). Though they can (as just shown) imply different things, since most-if-not-all of this sort of thing aren't actually binary. "Non-white" is something else than "black", "non-Christian" doesn't imply either Muslim or atheist.
Historically, though, many of them were regarded as binary matters. You were either male or female, you were either "one of us" or "one of the others" (Greek vs barbaroi, native vs immigrant,...), thus causing our language to have evolved that way.

Anyway, there are big differences between different Western cultures, but they're mostly historical. Differences with truly different cultures (say, China) I'm not really qualified to answer.
That said, in Dutch (in Flanders especially) there's been a strong movement lately to "abolish" certain words because they've been tainted. "Handicapped" has all but disappeared in English as well, but we've gone through, I think, 4 iterations over 10 years. Disabled, less-abled, differently-abled, variable-abled. I'm not kidding. Same for what I'll have to describe as "people whose ancestors have moved to Belgium in the past 2 or 3 generations, still have strong ties to their nation or culture of origin, no longer fin in there but don't quite want to subject themselves to our cultural norms or values either". No matter what the new word is, in 5 years' time it'll once again have garnered a negative connotation, so it's retired in favor of something "less offensive" - while happily ignoring large parts of the problem.
People seem to think that changing the words will make the problem go away. I've been meaning to send all of these people a copy of "1984" for a while now. Language isn't as strong as people might like, even though it's what we use to express our thoughts.

 

[Jax]

To answer the main question: I do think the US culture is more (let's put this in a politically correct way) "attuned" to political correctness. Sure we have the politicians who try to be as politically correct as possible, but I don't see many people around me making a fuss when someone doesn't use a politically correct term..

 

[Ravenpoe]

Just a quick response to Bubble181, I've never heard the term "Policeman" used outside of like a six year old talking. It's always been "The police" or if a specific person, "police officer."

 

[Jax]

Same in The Netherlands, I don't know about Belgium, but here we usually use police officer as well, or even more commom, just officer.
The nurse thing too, the male variety doesn't seem odd to me either.

 

[Cog]

You know what? I just realized that besides "heterosexual" there is no a common word for non gay people. At least none that I heard of. Another thing is that I have never spoken with a police officer in my life, but I probably call him "mr. policeman"

 

[Krisken]

Just a quick response to Bubble181, I've never heard the term "Policeman" used outside of like a six year old talking. It's always been "The police" or if a specific person, "police officer."

That might be regional, though, similar to bubbler/water fountain. I know here in the upper midwest it's common to say "policeman". I can't really speak for the rest of the country but if I recall you're in the Florida area and our different regions could be affecting our own personal experience.

 

[sixpackshaker]

"It's the police service; 'force' is too aggressive."

 

[PatrThom]

You know what? I just realized that besides "heterosexual" there is no a common word for non gay people. At least none that I heard of.

..."Straight?"

--Patrick

 

[Cog]

..."Straight?"

--Patrick

I'm sorry, I meant in spanish.

 

[Bowielee]

The short answer is:

People like defined groups. Group labels help identify ingroup vs outgroup members.

As stated earlier, the question is somewhat unclear seeing as language is itself a cultural construct. The one major purpose of language is to identify things and to convey those things to another person. Both of which fall right into needing to, by definition, differentiate one thing from another be it people or animals or chairs and tables.

 

[strawman]

language is itself a cultural construct.

While culture affects language, and language affects culture it seems that the two are still separable, and that you can have two very different cultures that use the same language (UK and US, south vs North Korea, etc), and I suspect that two very similar cultures might use different languages.

Therefore I suspect that inclusionary language may well be a feature of language, or it may be a feature of culture, but it needn't be both, or neither at the same time.

 

[PatrThom]

This discussion has reminded me how some languages do not distinguish between blue and green (and sometimes grey), and how this often means that until a person is introduced to the concept of a distinction between them, they personally don't bother to differentiate, referring to all of them with the same word. Almost makes me wonder if the founders of the language may have been color-blind.

--Patrick

 

[Bowielee]

This discussion has reminded me how some languages do not distinguish between blue and green (and sometimes grey), and how this often means that until a person is introduced to the concept of a distinction between them, they personally don't bother to differentiate, referring to all of them with the same word. Almost makes me wonder if the founders of the language may have been color-blind.

--Patrick

This is an example that my psych professors brought up often when talking about how perception changes culturally, particularly the two hues of blue that are supposedly referred to as two completely different colors in Russian. However, my computer science teacher was born and raised in Russia and he said that it wasn't true at all, they both fall under the heading of blue in his mind.

 

[Bubble181]

Bear in mind I'm not a native English speaker, policeman was just a random example to show this sort of word *exits* or existed in English. I'm sure other examples can be found.
My point there was that English was less gender-defined than either French or Dutch; which is also shown by the fact that most "regular" words don't have a gender in English. French - le/la and un/une, Dutch has male, female and indeterminate words, English doesn't. "A" and "the", that's it. "A tree" isn't male or female; "een boom" in Dutch is male, "un arbre" in French as well.